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ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

By 

William Dean Howells 






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ITALIAN 
JOURNEYS 

BY 

W. D. HO WELLS 




WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 
BY JOSEPH PENNELL 




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BOSTON AND NEW YORK. •*> •* ■*» 
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
THE RIVERSIDE PRESS, CAMBRIDGE 









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COPYRIGHT 1867 AND 1S95 BY W. D. HCWELLS 

COPYRIGHT I90I BY W. D. HOWELLS AND HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



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TRANSFER 
D. O. PUBLIC LIBSABSf 
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CAMBRIDGE • MASSACHUSETTS 
PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. 












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A CONFIDENCE 

WHEN the publishers suggested the notion 
of revising this book, and taming its wild 
youthfulness here and there, making it a little more 
just, if not a little wiser, and possibly shedding upon 
the belated text some light from the events occur- 
ring since it was written well-nigh forty years ago, I 
promptly refused. I also promptly refused to write 

sj ! any sort of introduction for this new edition ; and 
as I presently did revise the book, I am not now 

\* surprised to find myself addressing these prefatory 
lines to an imaginable reader. 

They are mainly to tell him of my odd experi- 
ence in going over my work, which at times moved 
me to doubt not only of the perfection of my taste, 
the accuracy of my knowledge, and the infallibility 
of my judgment, but the sincerity of my feelings 
and the veracity of my statements. From time to 
time it seemed to me that I was aware of posing, 
of straining, even, in some of my attitudes, and I 
had a sense of having put on more airs than I could 
handsomely carry, and of having at other times as- 
sumed an omniscience for which I can now find no 



vi A CONFIDENCE 

reasonable grounds. There were moments when I 
thought I had indulged unseemly spites and resent- 
ments towards nationalities that had never injured 
me, and yet blacker moments when I fancied I had 
pretended to feel these, but when in fact I was at 
heart most amiably affected toward all alien peoples. 
So exacting is one at sixty-four, that I fell upon 
these faults and pruned them away with a free 
hand ; and though I cannot hope to have removed 
them all, I can now honestly commend the book as 
much worthier credence than it was before. As for 
bringing it up to date, there I own that even my 
age has been powerless. My Italy was the Italy of 
the time when the Austrians seemed permanent in 
Lombardy and Venetia, and when the French gar- 
rison was apparently established indefinitely at 
Rome ; when Napoleon III. was emperor, and Pio 
Nono was pope, and the first Victor Emanuel was 
king, and Garibaldi was liberator, and Francis 
Joseph was kaiser. Of these the last alone remains 
to attest the past, and it seems to me that as far as 
my poor word can go, it ought to be left to corrobo- 
rate the reality of his witness, with no hint of change 
in conditions which are already sufficiently incredi- 
ble. 

W. D. Howells. 

August 28, 1 901. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

THE ROAD TO ROME FROM VENICE : 

I. LEAVING VENICE . 3 

II. FROM PADUA TO FERRARA 5 

III. THE PICTURESQUE, THE IMPROBABLE, AND THE 

PATHETIC IN FERRARA 9 

IV. THROUGH BOLOGNA TO GENOA 38 

V. UP AND DOWN GENOA 45 

VI. BY SEA FROM GENOA TO NAPLES 57 

VII. CERTAIN THINGS IN NAPLES 65 

VIII. A DAY IN POMPEII 78 

IX. A HALF-HOUR AT HERCULANEUM 95 

X. CAPRI AND CAPRIOTES I05 

XI. BETWEEN ROME AND NAPLES 1 24 

XII. ROMAN PEARLS 1 28 

FORZA MAGGIORE 1 53 

AT PADUA 173 

A PILGRIMAGE TO PETRARCH'S HOUSE AT ARQUA . I95 

A VISIT TO THE CIMBRI 215 

MINOR TRAVELS : 

I. PISA 235 

II. TRIESTE 242 

III. BASSANO 252 

IV. POSSAGNO, CANOVA'S BIRTHPLACE 258 

V. COMO 264 

STOPPING AT VINCENZA, VERONA, AND PARMA . . 27 1 

DUCAL MANTUA 30I 



THE ROAD TO ROME 








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I. LEAVING VENICE 

WE did not know, when we started from 
home in Venice, on the 8th of November, 
1864, that we had taken the longest road to Rome, 
We thought that of all the proverbial paths to the 
Eternal City that leading to Padua, and thence 
through Ferrara and Bologna to Florence, and so 
down the seashore from Leghorn to Civita Vecchia, 
was the best, the briefest, and the cheapest. Who 
could have dreamed that this path, so wisely and 
carefully chosen, would lead us to Genoa, conduct 
us on shipboard, toss us four dizzy days and nights, 
and set us down, void, battered, and bewildered, in 
Naples ? Luckily, 

" The moving accident is not my trade," 



4 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

for there are events of this journey (now happily at 
an end) which, if I recounted them with unsparing 
sincerity, would forever deter the reader from taking 
any road to Rome. 

Though, indeed, what is Rome, after all, when 
you come to it ? 




vAfu&'EM 



•s' S 







II. FROM PADUA TO FERRARA 

AS far as to Ferrara there was no sign of devi- 
ation from the direct line in our road, and the 
company was well enough. We had a Swiss family 
in the car with us to Padua, and they told us how 
.they were going home to their mountains from 
Russia, where they had spent nineteen years of 
their lives. They were mother and father and only 
daughter ; and the last, without ever having seen 
her ancestral country, was so Swiss in her yet 
childish beauty, that she filled the morning twilight 
with vague images of glacial height, blue lake, snug 
chalet, and whatever else of picturesque there is in 
paint and print about Switzerland. Of course, as 
the light grew brighter these images melted away, 
and left only a little frost upon the window-pane. 



6 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

The mother was restively anxious at nearing her 
country, and told us everything of its loveliness 
and happiness. Nineteen years of absence had not 
robbed it of the poorest charm, and I hope that see- 
ing it again took nothing from it. We said how glad 
we should be if we were as near America as she was 
to Switzerland. " America !" she screamed ;" you 
come from America ! Dear God, the world is wide 
— the world is wide ! " The thought was so para- 
lyzing that it silenced the fat little lady for a mo- 
ment, and gave her husband time to express his 
sympathy with us in our war, which he understood 
perfectly well. He trusted that the revolution to 
perpetuate slavery must fail, and he hoped that the 
war would soon end, for it made cotton very dear. 

Europe is material : I doubt if, after Victor 
Hugo and Garibaldi, there were many upon that 
continent whose enthusiasm for American unity 
(which is European freedom) was not somewhat 
chilled by the expensiveness of cotton. The fab- 
rics were all doubled in price, and every man in 
Europe paid tribute in hard money to the devotion 
with which we prosecuted the war, and, inciden- 
tally, interrupted the cultivation of cotton. 

We shook hands with our friends, and dismounted 
at Padua, where we were to take the diligence for 
the Po. In the diligence their loss was more than 
made good by the company of the only honest man 
in Italy. Of course this honest man had been a 
great sufferer from his own countrymen, and I 
wish that all English and American tourists, who 



FROM PADUA TO FERRARA 7 

think themselves the sole victims of publican 
rapacity and deceit in Italy, could have heard our 
honest man's talk. The truth is, these ingenious 
people prey upon their own kind with an avidity 
quite as keen as that with which they devour stran- 
gers ; and I am half persuaded that a ready-witted 
foreigner fares better among them than a traveler 
of their own nation. Italians will always pretend, 
on any occasion, that you have been plundered 
much worse than they ; but the reverse often hap- 
pens. They give little in fees ; but their landlord, 
their porter, their driver, and their boatman pil- 
lage them with the same impunity that they rob an 
Inglese. As for this honest man in the diligence, 
he had suffered such enormities at the hands of the 
Paduans, from which we had just escaped, and at 
the hands of the Ferrarese, into which we were 
rushing (at the rate of five miles scant an hour), 
that I was almost minded to stop between the nests 
of those brigands and pass the rest of my days at 
Rovigo, where the honest man lived. His talk was 
amusingly instructive, and went to illustrate the 
strong municipal spirit which still dominates all 
Italy, and which is more inimical to an effectual 
unity among Italians than Pope or Kaiser has ever 
been. Our honest man of Rovigo was a foreigner 
at Padua, twenty-five miles north, and a foreigner 
at Ferrara, twenty-five miles south ; and through- 
out Italy the native of one city is an alien in an- 
other, and is as lawful prey as a Russian or an 
American with people who consider every stranger 



8 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

as sent them by the bounty of Providence to be 
eaten alive. Heaven knows what our honest man 
had paid at his hotel in Padua, but in Ferrara the 
other week he had been made to give five francs 
apiece for two small roast chickens, besides a fee to 
the waiter ; and he pathetically warned us to beware 
how we dealt with Italians. Indeed, I never met a 
man so thoroughly persuaded of the rascality of his 
nation and of his own exceptional virtue. He took 
snuff with his whole person ; and he volunteered, 
at sight of a flock of geese, a recipe which I give 
the reader: stuff a goose with sausage; let it hang 
in the weather during the winter; and in the spring 
cut it up and stew it, and you have an excellent 
and delicate soup. 

But after all, our friend's talk, though constant, 
became dispiriting, and we were willing when he left 
us. His integrity had, indeed, been so oppressive 
that I was glad to be swindled in the charge for our 
dinner at the Iron Crown, in Rovigo, and rode more 
cheerfully on to Ferrara. 







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III. THE PICTURESQUE, THE IMPROBABLE, 
AND THE PATHETIC IN FERRARA 



IT was one of the fatalities of travel, rather than 
any real interest in the poet, which led me to 
visit the prison of Tasso on the night of our arrival, 
which was mild and moonlit. The portier at the 
Stella d'Oro suggested the sentimental homage to 
sorrows which it is sometimes difficult to respect, 
and I went and paid this homage in the coal-cellar 
in which was never imprisoned the poet whose 
works I had not read. 

The famous hospital of St. Anna, where Tasso 
was confined for seven years, is still an asylum for 
the infirm and sick, but it is no longer used as a 
mad-house. It stands on one of the long, silent 
Ferrarese streets, not far from the Ducal Castle, and 



io ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

it is said that from the window of his cell the un- 
happy poet could behold Leonora in her tower. It 
may be so ; certainly those who can believe in the 
genuineness of the cell will have no trouble in be- 
lieving that the vision of Tasso could pierce through 
several brick walls and a Doric portico, and at last 
comprehend the lady at her casement in the castle. 
We entered a modern gateway, and passed into a 
hall of the elder edifice, where a slim young soldier 
sat reading a romance of Dumas. This was the 
keeper of Tasso's prison,; and knowing me, by the 
instinct which teaches an Italian custodian to dis- 
tinguish his prey, for a seeker after the True and 
Beautiful, he relinquished his romance, lighted a 
waxen taper, unbolted a heavy door with a dramatic 
clang, and preceded me to the cell of Tasso. We 
descended a little stairway, and found ourselves in a 
sufficiently spacious court, which was still ampler in 
the poet's time, and was then a garden planted with 
trees and flowers. On a low doorway to the right 
was inscribed the legend " Prigione di Tasso," 
and passing through this doorway into a kind of 
reception-cell, we entered the poet's dungeon. It 
is an oblong room, with a low wagon-roof ceiling, 
under which it is barely possible to stand upright. 
A single narrow window admits the light, and the 
stone casing of this window has a hollow in a certain 
place, which might well have been worn there by the 
friction of the hand that for seven years passed the 
prisoner his food through the small opening. The 
young custodian pointed to this memento of suffer- 



IN FERRARA II 

ing, without effusion, and he drew my attention to 
other remarkable things in the cell, without troubling 
himself to palliate their improbability in the least. 
They were his stock in trade ; you paid your money, 
and took your choice of believing in them or not. 
On the other hand, my pointer, an ex-valet de place , 
pumped a softly murmuring stream of enthusiasm, 
and expressed the freshest delight in the inspection 
of each object of interest. 

One still faintly discerns among the vast number 
of names with which the walls of the ante-cell are 
be-written, that of Lamartine. The name of Byron, 
which was once deeply graven in the stucco, had 
been scooped away by the Grand Duke of Tuscany 
(so the custodian said), and there is only part of a 
capital B now visible. But the cell itself is still 
fragrant of associations with the noble bard, who, 
according to the story related to Valery, caused him- 
self to be locked up in it, and there, with his head 
fallen upon his breast, and frequently smiting his 
brow, spent two hours in pacing the floor with great 
strides. It is a touching picture ; but its pathos 
becomes somewhat embarrassing when you enter 
the cell, and see the impossibility of taking more 
than three generous paces without turning. When 
Byron issued forth, after this exercise, he said (still 
according to Valery) to the custodian : " I thank 
thee, good man ! The thoughts of Tasso are now 
all in my mind and heart." " A short time after 
his departure from Ferrara," adds the Frenchman, 
maliciously, " he composed his ' Lament of Tasso/ 



12 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

a mediocre result from such inspiration." No doubt 
all this is colored, for the same author adds another 
tint to heighten the absurdity of the spectacle : he 
declares that Byron spent part of his time in the 
cell in writing upon the ceiling Lamartine's verses 
on Tasso, which he misspelled. The present visitor 
has no means of judging of the truth concerning 
this, for the lines of the poet have been so smoked 
by the candles of successive pilgrims in their efforts 
to get light on them, that they are now utterly 
illegible. But if it is uncertain what were Byron's 
emotions on visiting the prison of Tasso, there is no 
doubt about Lady Morgan's : she " experienced a 
suffocating emotion ; her heart failed her on enter- 
ing that cell ; and she satisfied a melancholy curi- 
osity at the cost of a most painful sensation." 

I find this amusing fact stated in a translation of 
her ladyship's own language, in a clever guide-book 
called "II Servitore di Piazza," which I bought at 
Ferrara, and from which, I confess, I have learnt all 
I know to confirm me in my doubt of Tasso' s prison. 
The Count Avventi, who writes this book, prefaces 
it by saying that he is a valet de place who knows 
how to read and write, and he employs these unusual 
gifts with singular candor and clearness. No one, he 
says, before the nineteenth century, ever dreamed of 
calling the cellar in question Tasso's prison, and it 
was never before that time made the shrine of sen- 
timental pilgrimage, though it has since been visited 
by every traveler who has passed through Ferrara. 
It was used during the poet's time to hold charcoal 



IN FERRARA 13 

and lime; and not long ago died an old servant of 
the hospital, who remembered its use for that pur- 
pose. It is damp, close, and dark, and Count Av- 
venti thinks it hardly possible that a delicate courtier 
could have lived seven years in a place unwholesome 
enough to kill a stout laborer in two months ; while 
it seems to him not probable that Tasso should have 
received there the visits of princes and other dis- 
tinguished persons whom Duke Alfonso allowed to 
see him, or that a prisoner who was often permitted 
to ride about the city in a carriage should have been 
thrust back into such a cavern on his return to the 
hospital. " After this," says our valet de place who 
knows how to read and write, " visit the prison of 
Tasso, certain that in the hospital of St Anna that 
great man was confined for many years ; " and, 
with this chilly warning, leaves his reader to his 
emotions. 

I am afraid that if as frank caution were uttered 
in regard to other memorable places, the objects of 
interest in Italy would dwindle sadly in number, and 
the valets de place, whether they know how to read 
and write or not, would be starved to death. Even 
the learning of Italy is poetic ; and an Italian would 
rather enjoy a fiction than know a fact — in which 
preference I am not ready to pronounce him unwise. 
But this characteristic of his embroiders the stran- 
ger's progress throughout the whole land with fan- 
ciful improbabilities ; so that if one use his eyes 
half as much as his wonder, he must see how much 
better it would have been to visit, in fancy, scenes 



14 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

that have an interest so largely imaginary. The 
utmost he can make out of the most famous place 
is, that it is possibly what it is said to be, and is 
more probably as near that as anything local enter- 
prise could furnish. He visits the very cell in 
which Tasso was confined, and has the satisfaction 
of knowing that it was the charcoal-cellar of the hos- 
pital in which the poet dwelt. And the genius loci 
• — where is that ? Away in the American woods, 
very likely, whispering some dreamy, credulous 
youth, — telling him charming fables of its locus, 
and proposing to itself to abandon him as soon as 
he sets foot upon its native ground. You see, 
though I cared little about Tasso, and nothing 
about his prison, I was heavily disappointed in not 
being able to believe in it, and felt somehow that I 
had been awakened from a cherished dream. 

ii 

But I have no right to cast the unbroken shadow 
of my skepticism upon the reader, and so I tell him 
a story about Ferrara which I actually believe. He 
must know that in Ferrara the streets are marvel- 
ously long and straight. On the corners formed by 
the crossing of two of the longest and straightest 
of these streets stand four palaces, in only one of 
which we have a present interest. This palace my 
guide took me to see, after our visit to Tasso's 
prison, and, standing in its shadow, he related to me 
the occurrence which has given it a sad celebrity. 
It was, in the time of the gifted toxicologist, the 



IN FERRARA 15 

residence of Lucrezia Borgia, who used to make 
poisonous little suppers there, and ask the best 
families of Italy to partake of them. It happened 
on one occasion that Lucrezia Borgia was thrust out 
of a ball-room at Venice as a disreputable character, 
and treated with peculiar indignity. She deter- 
mined to make the Venetians repent their unwonted 
accession of virtue, and she therefore allowed the 
occurrence to be forgotten till the proper moment 
of her revenge arrived, when she gave a supper, and 
invited to her board eighteen young and handsome 
Venetian nobles. Upon the preparation of this re- 
past she bestowed all the resources of her exquisite 
knowledge ; and the result was the Venetians were 
so felicitously poisoned that they had just time to 
listen to a speech from the charming and ingenious 
lady of the house before expiring. In this address 
she reminded her guests of the occurrence in the 
Venetian ball-room, and perhaps exulted a little 
tediously in her present vengeance. She was sur- 
prised and pained when one of the guests inter- 
rupted her, and, justifying the treatment she had 
received at Venice, declared himself her natural 
son. The lady instantly recognized him, and in the 
sudden revulsion of maternal feeling, begged him 
to take an antidote. This he not only refused to 
do, but continued his dying reproaches, till his mo- 
ther, losing her self-command, drew her poniard and 
plunged it into his heart. 

The blood of her son fell upon the table-cloth, 
and this being hung out of the window to dry, the 



16 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

wall received a stain, which neither the sun nor rain 
of centuries sufficed to efface, and which was only 
removed with the masonry, when it became neces- 
sary to restore the wall under that window, a few 
months before the time of my visit to Ferrara. Ac- 
cordingly, the blood-stain has now disappeared ; but 
the conscientious artist who painted the new wall 
has faithfully restored the tragic spot, by bestowing 
upon the stucco a bloody dash of Venetian red. 

in 

It would be pleasant and merciful, I think, if old 
towns, after having served a certain number of cen- 
turies for the use and pride of men, could be released 
to a gentle, unmolested decay. I, for my part, would 
like to have the ducal cities of North Italy, such as 
Mantua, Modena, Parma, and Ferrara, locked up 
quietly within their walls, and left to crumble and 
totter and fall, without any harder presence to vex 
them in their decrepitude than that of some gray 
custodian, who should come to the gate with clank- 
ing keys, and admit the wandering stranger, if he 
gave signs of a reverent sympathy, to look for a 
little while upon the reserved and dignified desola- 
tion. It is a shame to tempt these sad old cities into 
unnatural activity, when they long ago made their 
peace with the world, and would fain be mixing their 
weary brick and mortar with the earth's unbuilded 
dust ; and it is hard for the emotional traveler to 
restrain his sense of outrage at finding them inhab- 
ited, and their rest broken by sounds of toil, traffic, 



IN FERRARA 17 

and idleness; at seeing places that would gladly 
have had done with history still doomed to be parts 
of political systems, to read the newspapers, and to 
expose railway guides and caricatures of the Pope 
and of Napoleon in their shop windows. 

Of course, Ferrara was not incorporated into a 
living nation against her will, and I therefore mar- 
veled the more that she had become a portion of 
the present kingdom of Italy. The poor little State 
had its day long before ours ; it had been a republic, 
and then subject to lords ; and then, its lords becom- 
ing dukes, it had led a life of gayety and glory till 
its fall, and given the world such names and memo- 
ries as had fairly won it the right to rest forever 
from making history. Its individual existence ended 
with that of Alfonso II., in 1597, when the Pope 
declared it reverted to the Holy See ; and I always 
fancied that it must have received with a spectral, 
yet courtly kind of surprise, those rights of man 
which bloody handed France distributed to the Ital- 
ian cities in 1796; that it must have experienced a 
ghostly bewilderment in its rapid transformation, 
thereafter, under Napoleon, into part of the Cis- 
padan Republic, the Cisalpine Republic, the Italian 
Republic, and the Kingdom of Italy, and that it 
must have sunk back again under the rule of the 
Popes with gratitude and relief at last — as phan- 
toms are reputed to be glad when released from 
haunting the world where they once dwelt. I speak 
of all this, not so much from actual knowledge of 
facts as from personal feeling ; for it seems to me 



18 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

that if I were a city of the past, and must be in- 
habited at all, I should choose just such priestly 
domination, assured that though it consumed my 
substance, yet it would be well for my fame and 
final repose. I should like to feel that my old 
churches were safe from demolition ; that my old 
convents and monasteries should always shelter the 
pious indolence of friars and nuns. It would be 
pleasant to have studious monks exploring quaint 
corners of my unphilosophized annals, and gentle, 
snuff-taking abbes writing up episodes in the his- 
tory of my noble families, and dedicating them to 
the present heirs of past renown ; while the thinker 
and the reviewer should never penetrate my 
archives. Being myself done with war, I should 
be glad to have my people exempt, as they are 
under the Pope, from military service ; and I should 
hope that if the Legates taxed them, the taxes paid 
would be as so many masses said to get my soul 
out of the purgatory of perished capitals. Finally, 
I should trust that in the sanctified keeping of the 
Legates my mortal part would rest as sweetly as 
bones laid in hallowed earth brought from Jeru- 
salem ; and that under their serene protection I 
should be forever secure from being in any way ex- 
humed and utilized by the ruthless hand of Progress. 
However, as I said, this is a mere personal prefer- 
ence, and other old cities might feel differently. In- 
deed, though disposed to condole with Ferrara upon 
the fact of her having become part of modern Italy, 
I could not deny, on better acquaintance with her, 



IN FERRARA 19 

that she was still almost entirely of the past. She has 
certainly missed that ideal perfection of non-exist- 
ence under the Popes which I have just depicted, 
but she is practically almost as profoundly at rest 
under the King of Italy. One may walk long 
through the longitude and rectitude of many of her 
streets without the encounter of a single face : the 
place, as a whole, is by no means as lively as Pom- 
peii, where there are always strangers ; perhaps the 
only cities in the world worthy to compete with 
Ferrara in point of agreeable solitude are Mantua 
and Herculaneum. It is the newer part of the 
town — the modern quarter built before Boston was 
settled or Ohio was known — which is loneliest ; 
and whatever motion and cheerfulness are still felt 
in Ferrara linger fondly about the ancient holds of 
life — about the street before the castle of the 
Dukes, and in the elder and narrower streets 
branching away from the piazza of the Duomo, 
where, on market days, there is a kind of dreamy 
tumult. In the Ghetto we were almost crowded, 
and people wanted to sell us things, with an enter- 
prise that contrasted strangely with shopkeeping 
apathy elsewhere. Indeed, surprise at the presence 
of strangers spending two days in Ferrara when 
they could have got away sooner, was the only emo- 
tion which the whole population agreed in express- 
ing with any degree of energy, but into this they 
seemed to throw their whole vitality. The Italians 
are everywhere an artless race, so far as concerns 
the gratification of their curiosity, from which no 



20 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

consideration of decency deters them. Here in 
Ferrara they turned about and followed us with 
their eyes, came to windows to see us, lay in wait 
for us at street corners, and openly and audibly 
debated whether we were English or German. This 
interest rose almost into a frenzy of craving to 
know more of us all, when on the third day the 
whole city assembled before our hotel, and wit- 
nessed, with a sort of desperate cry, the departure 
of the heavy-laden omnibus which bore us and our 
luggage from their midst. 

IV 

I doubt if, after St. Mark's in Venice, the Duomo 
at Parma, and the Four Fabrics at Pisa, there is a 
church more worthy to be seen for its quaint, rich 
architecture, than the cathedral at Ferrara. It is 
of that beloved Gothic of which eye or soul cannot 
weary, and we continually wandered back to it from 
other more properly interesting objects. It is hor- 
ribly restored indoors, and its baroque splendors 
soon drove us forth, after we had looked at the Last 
Judgment by Bastianino. The style of this painting 
is muscular and Michelangelic, and the artist's notion 
of putting his friends in heaven and his foes in hell 
is by no means novel ; but he has achieved fame 
for his picture by the original thought of making 
it his revenge for a disappointment in love. The 
unhappy lady who refused his love is represented 
in the depths, in the attitude of supplicating the 
pity and interest of another maiden in Paradise who 



IN FERRARA 21 

accepted Bastianino, and who consequently has no 
mercy on her that snubbed him. But I counted of 
far more value than this fresco the sincere old 
sculptures on the facade of the cathedral, in which 
the same subject is treated, beginning from the 
moment the archangel's trump has sounded. The 
people getting suddenly out of their graves at the 
summons are all admirable ; but the best among 
them is the excellent man with one leg over the side 
of his coffin, and tugging with both hands to pull 
himself up, while the coffin-lid tumbles off behind. 
One sees instantly that the conscience of this early 
riser is clean, for he makes no miserable attempt to 
turn over for a nap of a few thousand years more, 
with the pretense that it was not the trump of 
doom, but some other and unimportant noise he had 
heard. The final reward of the blessed is expressed 
by the repose of one small figure in the lap of a 
colossal effigy, which I understood to mean rest in 
Abraham's bosom ; but the artist has bestowed far 
more interest and feeling upon the fate of the 
damned, who are all boiling in rows of immense 
pots. It is doubtful (considering the droll aspect 
of heavenly bliss as figured in the one small saint 
and the large patriarch) whether the artist intended 
the condition of his sinners to be so horribly comic 
as it is ; but the effect is just as great, for all that, 
and the slowest conscience might well take alarm 
from the spectacle of fate so grotesque and ludi- 
crous ; for, wittingly or unwittingly, the artist here 
punishes, as Dante knew best how to do, the folly 



22 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

of sinners as well as their wickedness. Boiling is 
bad enough ; but to be boiled in an undeniable 
dinner-pot, like a leg of mutton, is to suffer shame 
as well as agony. 

We turned from these horrors, and walked down 
by the side of the Duomo toward the Ghetto, which 
is not so foul as one could wish a Ghetto to be. 
The Jews were admitted to Ferrara in 1275, and, 
throughout the government of the Dukes, were free 
to live where they chose in the city ; but the Pope's 
Legate assigned them afterward a separate quarter, 
which was closed with gates. Large numbers of 
Spanish Jews fled hither during the persecutions, 
and there are four synagogues for the four lan- 
guages, — Spanish, German, French, and Italian. 
Avventi mentions, among other interesting facts 
concerning the Ferrarese Jews, that one of their 
Rabbins, Isaaco degli Abranelli, a man of excellent 
learning in the Scriptures, claimed to be descended 
from David. His children still abide in Ferrara ; 
and it may have been one of his kingly line that 
kept the tempting antiquarian's shop on the corner 
from which you turn up toward the Library. I 
should think such a man would find a sort of melan- 
choly solace in such a place : filled with broken and 
fragmentary glories of every kind, it would serve 
him for that chamber of desolation, set apart in the 
houses of the Oriental Hebrews as a place to bewail 
themselves in ; and, indeed, this idea may go far to 
explain the universal Israelitish fondness for dealing 
in relics and ruins. 



IN FERRARA 23 



The Ghetto was in itself indifferent to us ; it was 
merely our way to the Library, whither the great 
memory of Ariosto invited us to see his famous 
relics treasured there. 

We found that the dead literati of Ferrara had 
the place wholly to themselves ; not a living soul 
disputed the solitude of the halls with the custodi- 
ans, and the bust of Ariosto looked down from his 
monument upon rows of empty tables, idle chairs, 
and dusty inkstands. 

The poet, who was painted by Titian, has a tomb 
of abandoned ugliness, and sleeps under three 
epitaphs ; while cherubs frescoed on the wall be- 
hind affect to disclose the mausoleum, by lifting a 
frescoed curtain, but deceive no one who cares to 
consider how impossible it would be for them to 
perform this service and caper so ignobly as they 
do at the same time. In fact, this tomb of Ariosto 
shocks with its hideousness and levity. It stood 
formerly in the Church of San Benedetto, where it 
was erected shortly after the poet's death, and it 
was brought to the Library by the French, when 
they turned the church into a barrack for their 
troops. The poet's dust, therefore, rests here, 
where the worm, working silently through the vel- 
lum volumes on the shelves, feeds upon the immor- 
tality of many other poets. In the adjoining hall 
are the famed and precious manuscripts of Ariosto 
and of Tasso. A special application must be made 



24 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

to the librarian, in order to see the fragment of the 
" Furioso " in Ariosto's hand, and the manuscript 
copy of the " Gerusalemma," with the corrections 
by Tasso. There are some pages of Ariosto's Satires, 
framed and glazed for the satisfaction of the less 
curious ; as well as a letter of Tasso's, written from 
the Hospital of St. Anna, which the poet sends to a 
friend, with twelve shirts, and in which he begs that 
his friend will have the shirts mended, and cautions 
him " not to let them be mixed with others. ,, But 
when the slow custodian had at last unlocked that 
more costly fragment of the " Furioso/' and placed 
it in my hands, the other manuscripts had no value 
for me. It seems to me that the one privilege 
which travel has reserved to itself is that of making 
each traveler, in presence of its treasures, forget 
whatever other travelers have said or written about 
them. I had read so much of Ariosto's industry, 
and of the proof of it in this manuscript, that I 
doubted if I should at last marvel at it. But the 
wonder remains with the relic, and I paid it my 
homage devoutly and humbly, and was disconcerted 
afterward to read again in my Valery how sensibly 
all others had felt the preciousness of that famous 
page, which, filled with half a score of previous 
failures, contains in a little open space near the 
margin, the poet's final triumph in a clearly written 
stanza. Scarcely less touching and interesting than 
Ariosto's painful work on these yellow leaves is the 
grand and simple tribute which another Italian poet 
was allowed to inscribe on one of them : " Vittorio 



IN FERRARA 25 

Alfieri beheld and venerated ; " and I think, count- 
ing over the many memorable things I saw on the 
road to Rome and the way home again, this manu- 
script was the noblest thing and best worthy to be 
remembered. 

When at last I turned from it, however, I saw 
that the custodian had another relic of Messer 
Lodovico, which he was not ashamed to match with 
the manuscript in my interest. This was the bone 
of one of the poet's fingers, which the pious care of 
Ferrara had picked up from his dust (when it was 
removed from the church to the Library), and 
neatly bottled and labeled. They keep a great deal 
of sanctity in bottles with the bones of saints in 
Italy ; but I found very little savor of poesy hang- 
ing about this literary relic. 

As if the melancholy fragment of mortality had 
marshaled us the way, we went from the Library to 
the house of Ariosto, which stands at the end of a 
long, long street, not far from the railway station. 
There was not a Christian soul, not a boy, not a cat 
nor a dog to be seen in all that long street, at high 
noon, as we looked down its narrowing perspective, 
and if the poet and his friends have ever a mind for 
a posthumous meeting in his little reddish brick 
house, there is nothing to prevent their assembly, in 
broad daylight, from any part of the neighborhood. 
There was no presence, however, more spiritual 
than a comely country girl to respond to our sum- 
mons at the door, and nothing but a tub of corn- 
meal disputed our passage inside. When I found 



26 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

the house inhabited by living people, I began to 
be sorry that it was not as empty as the Library 
and the street. Indeed, it is much better with Pe- 
trarch's house at Arqua, where the grandeur of the 
past is never molested by the small household joys 
and troubles of the present. That house is vacant, 
and no eyes less tender and fond than the poet's 
visitors may look down from its windows over the 
slope of vines and olives which it crowns ; and 
it seemed hard, here in Ferrara, where the houses 
are so many and the people are so few, that Arios- 
to's house could not be left to him. Parva sed apta 
mihiy he has contentedly written upon the front ; 
but I doubt if he finds it large enough for another 
family, though his modern housekeeper reserves 
him certain rooms for visitors. To gain these, you 
go up to the second story — there are but two floors 
— and cross to the rear of the building, where Ari- 
osto's chamber opens out of an anteroom, and looks 
down upon a pinched and faded bit of garden. 1 In 
this chamber they say the poet died. It is oblong, 
and not large. I should think the windows and roof 
were of the poet's time, and that everything else 

1 In this garden the poet spent much of his time — chiefly in 
plucking up and transplanting the unlucky shrubbery, which was 
never suffered to grow three months in the same place, — such 
was the poet's rage for revision. It was probably never a very 
large or splendid garden, for the reason that Ariosto gave when 
reproached that he who knew so well how to describe magnificent 
palaces should have built such a poor little house : " It was easier 
to make verses than houses, and the fine palaces in his poem cost 
him no money." 



IN FERRARA 27 

had been restored ; I am quite sure the chairs and 
inkstand were kindly-meant inventions ; for the 
poet's burly great armchair and graceful inkstand 
are both preserved in the Library. But the house 
is otherwise decent and probable ; and I do not 
question but it was in the hall where we encoun- 
tered the meal-tub that the poet kept a copy of his 
" Furioso," subject to the corrections and advice of 
his visitors. 

The ancestral house of the Ariosti has been 
within a few years restored out of all memory and 
semblance of itself ; and my wish to see the place 
in which the poet was born and spent his childhood 
resulted, after infinite search, in finding a building 
faced newly with stucco and newly French-win- 
dowed. 

Our portier said it was the work of the late Eng- 
lish vice-consul, who had bought the house. When 
I complained of the sacrilege, he said : " Yes, it is 
true. But then, you must know, the Ariosti were 
not one of the noble families of Ferrara." 

VI 

The castle of the Dukes of Ferrara, about which 
cluster so many sad and splendid memories, stands 
in the heart of the city. I think that the moonlight 
which, on the night of our arrival, showed me its 
massive walls rising from the shadowy moat that 
surrounds them, and its four great towers, heavily 
buttressed, and expanding at the top into bulging 
cornices of cavernous brickwork, could have fallen 



28 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

on nothing else in all Italy so picturesque, and so 
full of the proper dread charm of feudal times, as 
this pile of gloomy and majestic strength. The 
daylight took nothing of this charm from it ; for the 
castle stands isolated in the midst of the city, as its 
founder meant that it should, 1 and modern civiliza- 
tion has not crossed the castle moat to undignify 
its exterior with any visible touch of the present. 
To be sure, when you enter it, the magnificent life 
is gone out of the old edifice ; it is no stately hal- 
berdier who stands on guard at the gate of the 
drawbridge, but a stumpy Italian soldier in baggy 
trousers. The castle is full of public offices, and 
one sees in its courts and on its stairways, not bril- 
liant men-at-arms, nor gay squires and pages, but 
whistling messengers going from one office to an- 
other with docketed papers, and slipshod serving- 
men carrying the clerks their coffee in very dirty 

1 The castle of Ferrara was begun in 1385 by Niccolo d'Este 
to defend himself against the repetition of scenes of tumult, in 
which his princely rights were invaded. One of his tax-gatherers, 
Tommaso da Tortona, had, a short time before, made himself so 
obnoxious to the people by his insolence and severity, that they 
rose against him and demanded his life. He took refuge in the 
palace of his master, which was immediately assailed. The 
prince's own life was threatened, and he was forced to surrender 
the fugitive to the people, who tore Tortona limb from limb, 
and then, after parading the city with the mutilated remains, 
quietly returned to their allegiance. Niccolo, therefore, caused 
this castle to be built, which he strengthened with massive walls 
and towers commanding the whole city, and rendered inaccessible 
by surrounding it with a deep and wide canal from the river 
Reno. 



IN FERRARA 29 

little pots. Dreary-looking suitors, slowly grinding 
through the mills of law, or passing the routine of 
the offices, are the guests encountered in the corri- 
dors ; and all that bright-colored throng of the old 
days, ladies and lords, is passed from the scene. 
The melodrama is over, and now we have a play 
of real life, founded on fact and inculcating a moral. 
Of course the custodians were slow to admit any 
change of this kind. If you could have believed 
them, — and the poor people told as many lies as 
they could to make you, — you would believe that 
nothing had ever happened of a commonplace nature 
in this castle. The taking-off of Hugo and Parisina 
they think the great merit of the castle ; and one of 
them, seeing us, made haste to light his taper and 
conduct us down to the dungeons where those un- 
happy lovers were imprisoned. It is the misfortune 
of memorable dungeons to acquire, when put upon 
show, just the reverse of those properties which 
should raise horror and distress in the mind of the 
beholder. It was impossible to deny that the cells 
of Parisina and of Hugo were both singularly warm, 
dry, and comfortable ; and we, who had never been 
imprisoned in them, found it hard to command, for 
our sensation, the terror and agony of the miserable 
ones who suffered there. We, happy and secure in 
these dungeons, could not think of the guilty pair 
bowing themselves to the headsman's stroke in the 
gloomy chamber under the Hall of Aurora ; nor of 
the Marquis, in his night-long walk, breaking at last 
into frantic remorse and tears to know that his will 



30 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

had been accomplished. Nay, there upon its very 
scene, the whole tragedy faded from us ; and, see- 
ing our wonder so cold, the custodian tried to kindle 
it by saying that in the time of the event these cells 
were much dreadfuller than now, which was no doubt 
true. The floors of the dungeons are both below 
the level of the moat, and the narrow windows, or 
rather crevices to admit the light, were cut in the 
prodigiously thick wall just above the water, and 
were defended with four successive iron gratings. 
The dungeons are some distance apart : that of 
Hugo was separated from the outer wall of the cas- 
tle by a narrow passageway, while Parisina's win- 
dow opened directly upon the moat. 

When we ascended again to the court of the 
castle, the custodian, abetted by his wife, would 
have interested us in two memorable wells there, 
between which, he said, Hugo was beheaded ; and 
unabashed by the small success of this fable, he 
pointed out two windows in converging angles over- 
head, from one of which the Marquis, looking into 
the other, discovered the guilt of the lovers. The 
windows are now walled up, but are neatly repre- 
sented to the credulous eye by a fresco of lattices. 

Valery mentions another claim upon the interest 
of the tourist which this castle may make, in the 
fact that it once sheltered John Calvin, who was 
protected by the Marchioness Renee, wife of Her- 
cules II. ; and my " Servitore di Piazza" (the one 
who knows how to read and write) gives the fol- 
lowing account of the matter, in speaking of the 



IN FERRARA 31 

domestic chapel which Renee had built in the castle: 
" This lady was learned in belles-lettres and in the 
schismatic doctrines which at that time were insin- 
uating themselves throughout France and Germany, 
and with which Calvin, Luther, and other prose- 
lytes agitated the people and threatened war to the 
Catholic religion. Nationally fond of innovation, 
and averse to the court of Rome on account of the 
dissensions between her father and Pope Julius II., 
Renee began to receive the teachings of Calvin, 
with whom she maintained a correspondence. In- 
deed, Calvin himself, under the name of Huppeville, 
visited her in Ferrara, in 1536, and ended by cor- 
rupting her mind and seducing her into his own 
errors, which produced discord between her and her 
religious husband, and resulted in his placing her in 
temporary seclusion, in order to attempt her con- 
version. Hence, the chapel is faced with marble, 
paneled in relief, and studied to avoid giving place 
to saints or images, which were disapproved by the 
almost Anabaptist doctrines of Calvin, then fatally 
imbibed by the princess." 

We would willingly, as Protestants, have visited 
this wicked chapel ; but we were prevented from 
seeing it, as well as the famous frescoes of Dosso 
Dossi in the Hall of Aurora, by the fact that the 
prefect was giving a little dinner (pranzetto) in that 
part of the castle. We were not so greatly disap- 
pointed in reality as we made believe ; but our ser- 
vitore di piazza (the unlettered one) was almost 
moved to lesa maesta with vexation. He had been 



32 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

full of scorching patriotism the whole morning ; but 
now electing the unhappy and apologetic custodian 
representative of Piedmontese tyranny, he bitterly 
assailed the government of the king. In the times 
of His Holiness the Legates had made it their plea- 
sure and duty to show the whole castle to strangers. 
But now strangers must be sent away without see- 
ing its chief beauties, because, forsooth, the prefect 
was giving a little dinner. Presence of the Devil ! 

VII 

In our visits to the different churches in Ferrara 
we noticed devotion in classes of people who are 
devout nowhere else in Italy. Not only came solid- 
looking business men to say their prayers, but gay 
young dandies, who knelt and repeated their orisons 
and then rose and went seriously out. In Venice 
they would have posted themselves against a pillar, 
sucked the heads of their sticks, and made eyes at 
the young ladies kneeling near them. This degree 
of religion was all the more remarkable in Ferrara, 
because that city had been so many years under 
the Pope. 

Valery speaks of the delightful society which he 
met in the gray old town ; and it is said that Ferrara 
has an unusual share of culture in her wealthy class, 
which is large. With such memories of learning 
and literary splendor as belong to her, it would be 
strange if she did not in some form keep alive the 
sacred flame. But, though there may be refinement 
and erudition in Ferrara, she has given no great 



IN FERRARA 33 

name to modern Italian literature. Her men of 
letters seem to be of that race of grubs singularly 
abundant in Italy, — men who dig out of archives 
and libraries some topic of special and momentary 
interest and print it, unstudied and unphilosophized. 
Their books are material, not literature, and it is 
marvelous how many of them are published. A 
writer on any given subject can heap together from 
them a mass of fact and anecdote invaluable in its 
way ; but it is a mass without life or light, and must 
be vivified by him who uses it before it can serve the 
world, which does not care for its dead local value. 
What numbers of people used to write verses in 
Ferrara ! By operation of the principle which causes 
things concerning whatever subject you happen to 
be interested in to turn up in every direction, I 
found a volume of these dead-and-gone immortals 
at a book-stall, one day, in Venice. It is a curiously 
uncomfortable volume of the year 1703, printed all 
in italics. I suppose there are two hundred odd 
rhymers selected from in that book, — and how 
droll the most of them are, with their unmistakable 
traces of descent from Ariosto, Tasso, and Guarini ! 
What acres of enameled meadow there are in those 
pages ! Brooks enough to turn all the mills in the 
world go purling through them. I should say some 
thousands of nymphs are constantly engaged in 
weaving garlands there, and the swains keep such 
a piping on those familiar notes, — Amore, dolore, 
crude le, and miele. Poor little poets ! they knew 
no other tunes ! 



34 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

VIII 

I think some of the pleasantest people in Italy 
are the army gentlemen. There is the race's gen- 
tleness in their ways, in spite of their ferocious 
trade, and met in travel they are ready to render 
any little kindness. 

The other year at Reggio (which is not far from 
Modena) we stopped to dine at a restaurant where 
the whole garrison had its coat off and was playing 
billiards, with the exception of one or two officers, 
who were dining. These rose and bowed as we 
entered their room, and when the waiter pretended 
that such and such dishes were out (in Italy the 
waiter, for some mysterious reason, always pretends 
that the best dishes are out), they bullied him for 
the honor of Italy, and made him bring them to us. 
We were in deep despair at finding no French 
bread, and the waiter swore with pathos that there 
was none ; but as soon as his back was turned, a 
tightly laced little captain rose and began to forage 
for the bread. He opened every drawer and cup- 
board in the room, and finding none, invaded an- 
other room, captured several loaves from the plates 
laid there, and brought them back in triumph, pre- 
senting them to us amid the applause of his com- 
rades. The dismay of the waiter, on his return, was 
ineffable. 

Three officers, who dined with us at the table 
dliote of the Stella d'Oro in Ferrara (and excellent 
dinners were those we ate there), were visibly anxious 



IN FERRARA 35 

to address us, and began not uncivilly, but still in 
order that we should hear, to speculate on our 
nationality among themselves. It appeared that we 
were Germans ; for one of these officers, who had 
formerly been in the Austrian service at Vienna, 
recognized the word bitter in our remarks on the 
beccafichi. As I did not care to put these fine fel- 
lows to the trouble of hating us for others' faults, I 
made bold to say that we were not Germans, and to 
add that bitter was also an English word. Ah ! yes, 
to be sure, one of them admitted ; when he was with 
the Sardinian army in the Crimea, he had frequently 
heard the word used by the English soldiers. He 
nodded confirmation of what he said to his com- 
rades, and then was good enough to display what 
English he knew. It was barely sufficient to im- 
press his comrades ; but it led the way to a good 
deal of talk in Italian. 

" I suppose you gentlemen are all Piedmontese?" 
I said. 

" Not at all," said our Crimean. " I am from 
Como ; this gentleman, il signor Conte (il signor 
Conte bowed), is of Piacenza ; and our friend across 
the table is Genoese. The army is doing a great 
deal to unify Italy. We are all Italians now, and 
you see we speak Italian, and not our dialects, to- 
gether." 

My cheap remark that it was a fine thing to see 
them all united under one flag, after so many ages 
of mutual hate and bloodshed, turned the talk upon 
the origin of the Italian flag; and that led our 



36 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

Crimean to ask what was the origin of the English 
colors. 

" I scarcely know," I said. " We are Americans. " 

Our friends at once grew more cordial. " Oh, 
Americani ! " They had great pleasure of it. Did 
we think Signor Leencolen would be reelected ? 

I supposed that he had been elected that day, 
I said. 

Ah ! this was the election day, then. Cospetto ! 

At this the Genoese frowned superior intelligence, 
and the Crimean, gazing admiringly upon him, said 
he had been nine months at Nuova York, and that 
he had a brother living there. The poor Crimean 
boastfully added that he himself had a cousin in 
America, and that the Americans generally spoke 
Spanish. The count from Piacenza wore an air of 
pathetic discomfiture, and tried to invent a trans- 
atlantic relative, as I think, but failed. 

I am persuaded that none of these warriors really 
had kinsmen in America, but that they all pretended 
to have them, out of politeness to us, and that they 
believed each other. It was very kind of them, and 
we were so grateful that we put no embarrassing 
questions. Indeed, the conversation presently took 
another course, and grew to include the whole 
table. 

There was an extremely pretty Italian present 
with her newly wedded husband, who turned out to 
be a retired officer. He fraternized at once with our 
soldiers, and when we left the table they all rose 
and made military obeisances. Having asked leave 



IN FERRARA 37 

to light their cigars, they were smoking — the sweet 
young bride blowing a fairy cloud from her rosy 
lips with the rest. " Why," I once heard an Italian 
lady ask, " should men pretend to deny us the priv- 
ilege of smoking ? It is so pleasant and innocent/' 
It is but just to the Italians to say that they do 
not always deny it ; and there is, without doubt, a 
certain grace and charm in a pretty fumatrice. I 
suppose it is a habit not so pleasing in an ugly 
or middle-aged woman. 




IV. THROUGH BOLOGNA TO GENOA 



WE had intended to stay only one day at Fer- 
rara, but just at that time the storms pre- 
dicted on the Adriatic and Mediterranean coasts, 
by Mathieu de la Drome, had been raging all over 
Italy, and the railway communications were broken 
in every direction. The magnificent work through 
and under the Apennines, between Bologna and 
Florence, had been washed away by the mountain 
torrents in a dozen places, and the roads over the 
plains of the Romagna had been sapped by the 
flood, and rendered useless, where not actually laid 
under water. 

On the day of our intended departure we left the 
hotel, with other travelers, gayly incredulous of the 



BOLOGNA TO GENOA 39 

landlord's fear that no train would start for Bologna. 
At the station we found a crowd of people waiting 
and hoping, but there was a sickly cast of doubt in 
some faces, and the labeled employes of the railway 
wore looks of ominous importance. Of course the 
crowd did not lose its temper. It sought informa- 
tion of the officials running to and fro with telegrams, 
in a spirit of national sweetness, and consoled itself 
with saying, as Italy has said under all circumstances 
of difficulty for centuries : Ci vnol pazienza ! At 
last a blank silence fell upon it, as the Capo-Stazione 
advanced toward a well-dressed man in the crowd, 
and spoke to him quietly. The well-dressed man 
lifted his forefinger and waved it back and forth be- 
fore his face : — 

The Well-dressed Man. — Dunque, non si parte 
piu ? (No departures, then ?) 

The Capo-Stazione (waving his forefinger in like 
manner.) — Non si parte piu. (Like a mournful 
echo.) 

We knew quite as well from this pantomime of 
negation as from the dialogue our sad fate, and sub- 
mitted to it. Some adventurous spirit demanded 
whether any trains would go on the morrow. The 
Capo-Stazione, with an air of one who would not 
presume to fathom the designs of Providence, re- 
sponded : " Who knows ? To-day, certainly not. 
To-morrow, perhaps. But " — and vanished. 

This break in the line was only a few miles in 
extent, and trains could have approached both to 
and from Bologna, so that a little enterprise on the 



40 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

part of the company could have passed travelers 
from one side to the other with very small trouble 
or delay. But the railway company was as much 
daunted by the inundation as a peasant going to 
market, and for two months after the accident no 
trains carried passengers from one city to the other. 
No doubt, however, the line was under process of 
very solid repair meanwhile. 

For the present the only means of getting to 
Bologna was by carriage on the old highway, and 
accordingly we took passage thither in the omnibus 
of the Stella d'Oro. 

There was little to interest us in the country over 
which we rode. It is perfectly flat, and I suppose 
the reader knows what quantities of hemp and flax 
are raised there. The land seems poorer than in 
Lombardy, and the farmhouses and peasants' cot- 
tages are small and mean, though the peasants 
themselves, when we met them, looked well fed, and 
were certainly well clad. The landscape lay soak- 
ing in a dreary drizzle the whole way, and the town 
of Cento, when we reached it, seemed miserably 
conscious of being too wet and dirty to go indoors, 
and was loitering about in the rain. Our arrival 
gave the poor little place a sensation, for I think 
such a thing as an omnibus had not been seen there 
since the railway of Bologna and Ferrara was built. 
We went into the principal cafFe to lunch, — a caffe 
much too large for Cento, with immense red-leather 
cushioned sofas, and a cold, forlorn air of half-starved 
gentility, a clean, high-roofed caffe and a breezy, — 






BOLOGNA TO GENOA 41 

and thither the youthful nobility and gentry of the 
place followed us, and ordered a cup of coffee, that 
they might sit down and give us the pleasure of 
their distinguished company. They put on their 
very finest manners, and took their most captivating 
attitudes for the ladies' sake ; and the gentlemen 
of our party fancied that it was for them these young 
men began to discuss the Roman question. How 
loud they were, and how earnest ! And how often 
they consulted the ancient newspapers of the caff e ! 
The great painter Guercino w r as born at Cento, 
and they have a noble and beautiful statue of him 
in the piazza, which the town caused to be erected 
from contributions by all the citizens. Formerly 
his house was kept for a show to the public ; it was 
full of the pictures of the painter and many memen- 
tos of him ; but recently the paintings have been 
taken to the gallery, and the house is now closed. 
The gallery is, consequently, one of the richest 
second-rate galleries in Italy, and one may spend 
much longer time in it than we gave, with great 
profit. There are some most interesting heads of 
Christ, painted, as Guercino always painted the 
Saviour, with a great degree of humanity in the face. 
It is an excellent countenance, and full of sweet 
dignity, but quite different from the conventional 
face of Christ. 



42 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

ii 

At night we were again in Bologna, of which we 
had not seen the gloomy arcades for two years. It 
must be a dreary town at all times : in a rain it is 
horrible ; and I think the whole race of arcaded 
cities, Treviso, Padua, and Bologna, are dull, blind, 
and comfortless. The effect of the buildings vaulted 
above the sidewalks is that of a continuous cellar- 
way ; your view of the street is constantly interrupted 
by the heavy brick pillars that support the arches ; 
the arcades are not even picturesque. Liking to 
leave Bologna as quickly as possible, and, learning 
that there was no hope of crossing the Apennines 
to Florence, we made haste to take the first train 
for Genoa, meaning to proceed thence directly to 
Naples by steamer. 

In our car there were none but Italians, and the 
exchange of " La Perseveranza " of Milan for "II- 
Popolo " of Turin with one of them quickly opened 
the way for conversation and acquaintance. My 
new-made friend turned out to be a Milanese. He 
was a physician, and had served as a surgeon in the 
late war of Italian independence; but was now placed 
in a hospital in Milan. There was a gentle little 
blonde with him, and at Piacenza, where we stopped 
for lunch, " You see," said he, indicating the lady, 
"we are newly married,'* — which was, indeed, plain 
enough to any one who looked at their joyous faces, 
and observed how great disposition that little blonde 
had to nestle on the young man's broad shoulder. 



i 



BOLOGNA TO GENOA 43 

" I have a week's leave from my place," he went on, 
"and this is our wedding journey. We were to 
have gone to Florence, but it seems we are fated 
not to see that famous city." 

He spoke of it as immensely far off, and greatly 
amused us Americans, who had outgrown distances. 

" So we are going to Genoa instead, for two or 
three days." "Oh, have you ever been at Genoa ?" 
the bride broke in. " What magnificent palaces ! 
And then the bay, and the villas in the environs ! 
There is the Villa Pallavicini, with beautiful gar- 
dens, where an artificial shower breaks out from the 
bushes, and sprinkles the people who pass. Such 
fun ! " and she continued to describe vividly a city 
of which she had only heard from her husband ; 
and it was easy to see that she walked in paradise 
wherever he led her. 

They say that Italian husbands and wives do not 
long remain fond of each other, but it was impos- 
sible in the presence of these happy people not to 
believe in the eternity of their love. Their bliss 
infected everybody in the car, and in spite of the 
weariness of our journey, and the vexation of the 
misadventures which had succeeded one another 
unsparingly ever since we left home, we found our- 
selves far on the way to Genoa before we thought 
to grumble at the distance. There was with us, be- 
sides the bridal party, a lady traveling from Bologna 
to Turin, who had learned English in London, and 
spoke it much better than most Londoners. It 
is surprising how thoroughly Italians master a 



44 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

language so alien to their own as ours, and how 
frequently you find them acquainted with English. 

As we drew near Genoa, the moon came out on 
purpose to show us the superb city, and we strove 
eagerly for a first glimpse of the proud capital where 
Columbus was born. To tell the truth, the glimpse 
was but slight and false, for railways always enter 
cities by some mean level, from which any pictur- 
esque view is impossible. 

Near the station in Genoa, however, is the weak 
and ugly monument which the municipality has 
lately raised to Columbus. The moon made the 
best of this, which stands in a wide open space, and 
contrived, with an Italian skill in the arrangement 
of light, to produce an effect of undeniable splen- 
dor. On the morrow, we found out by the careless 
candor of the daylight what a uselessly big head 
Columbus had, and how the sculptor had not very 
happily thought proper to represent him with his 
sea-legs on. 










V. UP AND DOWN GENOA 



FORMER consul at 



whom I know, 



J~\. has told me a good many stories about the 
pieces of popular mind which he received at differ- 
ent times from the traveling public, in reproof of 
his difficulty of discovery ; and I think it must be 
one of the most jealously guarded rights of Ameri- 
can citizens in foreign lands to declare the national 
representative hard to find, if there is no other com- 
plaint to lodge against him. It seems to be, in 

peculiar degree, a quality of consulship at , to 

be found remote and inaccessible. My friend says 
that even at New York, before setting out for his 
post, when inquiring into the history of his prede- 
cessors, he heard that they were one and all hard 
to find ; and he relates that on the steamer, going 



46 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

over, there was a low fellow who set the table in a 
roar by a vulgar anecdote to this effect : — 

" There was once a consul at , who indi- 
cated his office hours by the legend on his door, ' In 
from ten to one/ An old ship-captain, who kept 
coming for about a week without finding the con- 
sul, at last furiously wrote, in the terms of wager, 
under this legend, ' Ten to one you 're out ! ' " 

My friend also states that one day a visitor of 
his remarked : "I am rather surprised to find you 
in. As a general rule, I never do find consuls in." 
Habitually, his fellow-countrymen entertained him 
with accounts of their misadventures in reaching 
him. It was useless to represent to them that his 

house was in the most convenient locality in , 

where, indeed, no stranger can walk twenty rods 
from his hotel without losing himself ; that their 
guide was an ass, or their courier a rogue. They 
listened to him politely, but they never pardoned 
him in the least ; and neither will I forgive the 
consul at Genoa. I had no earthly consular busi- 
ness with him, but a private favor to ask. It was 
Sunday, and I could not reasonably expect to find 
him at his office, or anybody to tell me where he 
lived ; but I have seldom had so keen a sense of 
personal wrong and national neglect as in my search 
for that consul's house. 

In Italy there is no species of fact with which 
any human being you meet will not pretend to have 
perfect acquaintance, and, of course, the driver 
whose fiacre we took professed himself a complete 



i 



UP AND DOWN GENOA 47 

guide to the consul's whereabouts, and took us suc- 
cessively to the residences of the consuls of all the 
South American republics. It occurred to me that 
it might be well to inquire of these officials where 
their colleague was to be found ; but it is true that 
not one consul of them was at home ! Their doors 
were opened by vacant old women, in whom a vague 
intelligence feebly guttered, like the wick of an ex- 
piring candle, and who, after feigning to throw 
floods of light on the object of my search, success- 
ively flickered out, and left me in total darkness. 

Till that day I never knew what lofty flights 
stairs were capable of. As out-of-doors, in Genoa, 
it is either all up or down hill, so indoors it is either 
all up or down stairs. Ascending and descending, 
in one palace after another, those infinite marble 
steps, it became a question, not solved to this hour, 
whether it was worse to ascend or descend, — each 
ordeal in its turn seemed so much more terrible than 
the other. 

At last I resolved to come to an understanding 
with the driver, and I spent what little breath I had 
left — it was dry and hot as the simoom — in blow- 
ing up that infamous man. "You are a great 
driver," I said, " not to know your own city. What 
are you good for if you can't take a foreigner to 
his consul's ? " " Signore," answered the driver 
patiently, "you would have to get a book in two 
volumes by heart, in order to be able to find every- 
body in Genoa. This city is a labyrinth." 

Truly, it had so proved, and I could scarcely be- 



48 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

lieve in my good luck when I actually found my 
friend, and set out with him on a ramble through 
its toils. 

A very great number of the streets in Genoa are 
footways merely, and these are as narrow, as dark, 
as full of jutting chimney-places, balconies, and 
opened window-shutters, and as picturesque as the 
little alleys in Venice. They wander at will around 
the bases of the gloomy old stone palaces, and seem 
to have a vagabond fondness for creeping down to 
the port, and losing themselves there in a certain 
cavernous arcade which curves round the water with 
the flection of the shore, and makes itself a twilight 
at noonday. Under it are clangorous shops of 
ironsmiths, and sizzling shops of marine cooks, and, 
looking down its dim perspective, one beholds chiefly 
sea-legs coming and going, more or less affected by 
strong waters ; and as the faces to which these sea- 
legs belong draw near, one discerns sailors from all 
parts of the world, — tawny men from Sicily and 
Norway, as diverse in their tawniness as olive and 
train-oil ; sharp faces from Nantucket and from the 
Piraeus, likewise mightily different in their sharp- 
ness ; blond Germans and blond Englishmen ; and 
now and then a colored brother also in the seafar- 
ing line, with sea-legs, also, more or less affected by 
strong waters like the rest. 

What curious people are these seafarers ! They 
coast the whole world, and know nothing of it, being 
more ignorant and helpless than children on shore. 
I spoke with the Yankee mate of a ship one day at 
Venice and asked him how he liked the city. 



UP AND DOWN GENOA 49 

Well, he had not been ashore yet. 

He was told he had better go ashore ; that the 
Piazza San Marco was worth seeing. 

Well, he knew it ; he had seen pictures of it ; but 
he guessed he would n't go ashore. 

Why not, now he was here ? 

Well, he laid out to go ashore the next time he 
came to Venice. 

He lay three weeks at Venice with his ship, after 
a voyage of two months, and he sailed away without 
ever setting his foot on that enchanted ground. 

I should have liked to stop some of those seafar- 
ers and ask them what they thought of Genoa. 

It must have been in the little streets — impass- 
able for horses — that the people sat and talked, 
as Heine fabled, in their doorways, and touched 
knees with the people sitting and talking on the 
thresholds of the opposite side. But we saw no 
gossipers there on our Sunday in Genoa ; and I think 
the domestic race of Heine's day no longer lives in 
Genoa ; for everybody we saw on the streets was 
gayly dressed in the idea of the last fashions, and 
was to be met chiefly in the public promenades. 
The fashions were French ; but here still lingers 
the lovely phantom of the old national costume of 
Genoa, and snow-white veils fluttered from many a 
dark head, and caressed many an olive cheek. It 
is the kindest and charitablest of attirements, this 
white veil, and, while decking beauty to the most 
perilous effect, befriends and modifies age and ugli- 
ness. 



co ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

The pleasure with which I look at the splendoT 
of an Italian crowd in winter is always touched with 
melancholy. I know that, at the time of its noon- 
day promenade, it has nothing but a cup of coffee 
in its stomach ; that it has emerged from a house as 
cold and dim as a cellar ; and that it will presently 
go home to dine on rice and boiled beef. I know 
that chilblains secretly gnaw the hands inside of its 
kid gloves, and I see in the rawness of its faces the 
anguish of winter-long suffering from cold. But I 
also look at many in this crowd with the eye of the 
economist, and wonder how people practicing even 
so great self-denial as they can contrive to make so 
much display on their little means, — how those 
clerks of public offices, who have rarely an income 
of five hundred dollars a year, can dress with such 
peerless gorgeousness. I suppose the national in- 
stinct teaches them ways and means unknown to us. 
The passion for dress is universal : the men are as 
fond of it as the women ; and, happily, clothes are 
comparatively cheap. 

We walked with the brilliant Genoese crowd upon 
the hill where the public promenade overlooks a 
landscape of city and country, houses and gardens, 
vines and olives, which it makes the heart ache to 
behold, it is so faultlessly beautiful. Behind us the 
fountain was — 

" Shaking its loosened silver in the sun ; " 

the birds were singing ; and there were innumerable 
pretty girls going by, about whom one might have 



UP AND DOWN GENOA 51 

made romances if one had not known better. Our 
friend pointed out to us the "pink jail" in which 
Dickens lived while at Genoa ; and showed us on 
the brow of a distant upland the villa, called II Para- 
diso, which Byron had occupied. I dare say this 
Genoese joke is already in print : that the Devil 
reentered Paradise when Byron took this villa. 
Though in loveliest Italy, one is half persuaded that 
the Devil had never left Paradise. 

After lingering a little longer on that delicious 
height, we turned and went down for a stroll 
through the city. 

My note-book says that Genoa is the most mag- 
nificent city I ever saw, and I hold by my note-book, 
though I hardly know how to prove it. Venice is, 
and remains, the most beautiful city in the world ; 
but her ancient rival impresses you with greater 
splendor. I suppose that the exclusively Renais- 
sance architecture, which Ruskin declares the archi- 
tecture of pride, lends itself powerfully to this 
effect in Genoa. It is here in its best mood, and 
there is little grotesque rococo to be seen, though 
the palaces are, as usual, loaded with ornament. 
The Via Nuova is the chief thoroughfare of the 
city, and the crowd pours through this avenue be- 
tween long lines of palaces. Height on height rise 
the stately, sculptured facades, colonnaded, statued, 
pierced, by mighty doorways and lofty windows ; 
and the palaces seem to gain a kind of aristocratic 
hauteur from the fact that there are for the most 
part no sidewalks, and that the carriages, rolling 



52 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

insolently through the crowd, threaten constantly 
to grind the pedestrian up against their carven mar- 
bles, and immolate him to their stony pride. There 
is something gracious and gentle in the grandeur of 
Venice, and much that the heart loves to cling to ; 
but in Genoa no sense of kindliness is touched by 
the magnificence of the city. 

It was an unspeakable relief, after such a street, 
to come, on a sudden, upon the Duomo, one of the 
few Gothic buildings in Genoa, and rest our jaded 
eyes on that architecture which Heaven seems truly 
to have put into the thoughts of man together with 
the Christian faith. O beloved beauty of aspiring 
arches, of slender and clustered columns, of flower- 
ing capitals and window-traceries, of many-carven 
breadths and heights, wherein all Nature breathes 
and blossoms again ! There is neither Greek per- 
fection, nor winning Byzantine languor, nor inso- 
lent Renaissance opulence, which may compare with 
this loveliness of yours ! Alas that the interior of 
this Gothic temple of Genoa should abound in the 
abomination of rococo restoration ! They say that 
the dust of St. John the Baptist lies there within a 
costly shrine ; and I wonder that it can sleep in 
peace amid all that heathenish show of bad taste. 
But the poor saints have to suffer a great deal in 
Italy. 

Outside, in the piazza before the church, there 
was an idle, cruel crowd, amusing itself with the 
efforts of a blind old man to find the entrance. 
He had a number of books which he desperately 



UP AND DOWN GENOA 53 

laid down while he ran his helpless hands over the 
clustered columns, and which he then desperately 
caught up again, in fear of losing them. At other 
times he paused, and wildly clasped his hands upon 
his eyes, or wildly threw up his arms; and then 
began to run to and fro again uneasily, while the 
crowd laughed and jeered. He seemed the type of 
a blind soul that gropes darkly about through life, to 
find the doorway of some divine truth or beauty, — 
touched by the heavenly harmonies from within, 
and miserably failing, amid the scornful cries and 
bitter glee of those who have no will but to mock 
aspiration. 

The girl turning somersaults in another place had 
far more popular sympathy than the blind man at 
the temple door, but she was hardly a more cheerful 
spectacle. For all her festive spangles and fairy-like 
brevity of skirts, she had quite a work-a-day look 
upon her honest, blood-red face, as if this were busi- 
ness though it looked like sport, and her part of the 
diversion were as practical as that of the famous 
captain of the waiters, who gave the act of peeling 
a sack of potatoes a playful effect by standing on 
his head. The poor damsel was going over and 
over, to the sound of most dismal drumming and 
braying in front of the immense old palace of the 
Genoese Doges, — a classic building, stilted on a 
rustic base, and quite worthy of Palladio, if any- 
body thinks that is praise. 

There was little left of our day when we had 
dined ; but having seen the outside of Genoa, and 



54 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

not hoping to see the inside, we found even this 
little heavy on our hands, and were glad as the hour 
drew near when we were to take the steamer for 
Naples. 

It had been one of the noisiest days spent during 
several years in clamorous Italy, whose voiceful up- 
roar strikes to the summits of her guardian Alps, 
and greets the coming stranger, and whose loud 
Addio would stun him at parting, if he had not 
meanwhile become habituated to the operatic pitch 
of her every-day tones. In Genoa, the hotels, tak- 
ing counsel of the vagabond streets, stand about 
the cavernous arcade already mentioned, and all the 
noise of the shipping reaches their guests. We rose 
early that Sunday morning to the sound of a fleet 
unloading cargoes of wrought-iron, and of the hard 
swearing of all nations of seafaring men. The 
whole day long the tumult followed us, and seemed 
to culminate at last in the screams of a parrot, who 
thought it fine to cry " Piove ! piove ! piove /" — 
" It rains ! it rains ! it rains ! " — and had, no doubt, 
a secret interest in some umbrella-shop. This un- 
principled bird dwelt somewhere in the neighbor- 
hood of the street where you see the awful tablet 
in the wall devoting to infamy the citizens of the 
old republic that were false to their country. The 
sight of that pitiless stone recalls with a thrill the 
picturesque, unhappy past, with all the wandering, 
half-benighted efforts of the people to rend their 
liberty from now a foreign and now a native lord. 
At best, they only knew how to avenge their 






UP AND DOWN GENOA 55 

wrongs ; but now, let us hope, they have learnt, 
with all Italy, to prevent them. The will was never 
wanting of old to the Ligurian race, and in this 
time they have done their full share to establish 
Italian freedom. 

I do not know why it should have been so surpris- 
ing to hear the boatman who rowed us to the steam- 
er's anchorage speak English ; but, after his harsh 
Genoese profanity in getting his boat into open 
water, it was the last thing we expected from him. 
It had somehow the effect of a furious beast ad- 
dressing you in your native tongue, and telling you 
it was "Wary poordy wedder;" and it made us 
cling to his good-nature with the trembling solici- 
tude of Little Red-Riding-Hood when she begins 
to have the first faint suspicions of her grandmother. 
However, our boatman was no wild beast, but took 
our six cents of btwnamano with the servility of a 
Christian man, when he had put our luggage in the 
cabin of the steamer. I wonder how he should have 
known us for Americans ? He did so know us, and 
said he had been at New York in better days, when 
he voyaged upon higher seas than those he now 
navigated. 

On board, we watched with compassion an old 
gentleman in the cabin making a hearty meal of sar- 
dines and fruit-pie, and I asked him if he had ever 
been at sea. No, he said. I could have wept over 
that innocent old gentleman's childlike confidence 
of appetite, and guileless trust of the deep. 

We went on deck, where one of the gentle beings 



56 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

of our party declared that she would remain as long 
as Genoa was in sight ; and, to tell the truth, the 
scene was worthy of the promised devotion. There, 
in a half-circle before us, blazed the lights of the 
quay ; above these twinkled the lamps of the steep 
streets and climbing palaces ; over and behind all 
hung the darkness on the heights, — a sable cloud 
dotted with ruddy points of flame burning in the 
windows of invisible houses. 

" Merrily did we drop " 

down the bay, and presently caught the heavy swell 
of the open sea. The other gentle being of our 
party then clutched my shoulder with a dreadful 
shudder, and after gasping, " O Mr. Scribbler, why 
will the ship roll so ? " was meekly hurried below 
by her sister, who did not return for a last glimpse 
of Genoa the Proud. 

In a moment heaven's sweet pity flapped away 
as with the sea-gull's wings, and I too felt that 
there was no help for it, and that I must go and lie 
down in the cabin. With anguished eyes I beheld 
upon the shelf opposite to mine the innocent old 
gentleman who had lately supped so confidently 
on sardines and fruit-pie. He lay upon his back, 
groaning softly to himself. 




VI. BY SEA FROM GENOA TO NAPLES 



OUR captain would in any company have won 
notice for his gentle and high-bred way ; in 
his place at the head of the table, he seemed to me 
one of the finest gentlemen I had ever seen. He 
had spent his whole life at sea, and had voyaged in 
all parts of the world except Japan, where he meant 
some day, he said, to go. He had been first a cabin- 
boy on a little Genoese schooner, and he had grad- 
ually risen to the first place on a sailing-vessel, and 
now he had been selected to fill a commander's 
post on this line of steamers. He had sailed a good 
deal in American waters, but chiefly on the Pacific 
coast, trading from the Spanish republican ports to 
those of California. He had been in that State 



58 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

during its effervescent days, when everything foul 
floated to the top, and I am afraid he formed there 
but a bad opinion of our people, though he was far 
too courteous to say outright anything of this sort. 

He had very fine, shrewd blue eyes, a lean, 
weather-beaten, kindly face, and a cautious way of 
saying things. I hardly expected him to turn out 
so red-hot a Democrat as he did on better acquaint- 
ance, but being a warm friend of man myself, I 
was not sorry. Garibaldi was the beginning and 
ending of his political faith, as he is with every en- 
thusiastic Italian. The honest soul's conception of 
all concrete evil was brought forth in two words, of 
odd enough application. In Europe, and Italy more 
particularly, true men have suffered chiefly from 
this form of evil, and the captain evidently could 
conceive of no other cause of suffering anywhere. 
We were talking of the American war, and when 
the captain had asked the usual question, " Quando 
finira mai questa gnerra?" and I responded as 
usual, " Ah, ci vmoI pazienza ! " the captain gave a 
heavy sigh, and, turning his head pensively aside, 
plucked his grapes from the cluster a moment in 
silence. 

Then he said : " You Americans are in the habit 
of attributing this war to slavery. The cause is not 
sufficient." 

I ventured to demur and explain. " No," said the 
captain, " the cause is not sufficient. We Italians 
know the only cause which could produce a war like 
this." 



FROM GENOA TO NAPLES 59 

I was naturally anxious to be instructed in the 
Italian theory, hoping it might be profounder than 
the English notion that we were fighting about 
tariffs. 

The captain frowned, looked at me carefully, and 
then said : — 

" In this world there is but one cause of mischief, 
— the Jesuits." 

11 

The first night out, from Genoa to Leghorn, was 
bad enough, but that which succeeded our departure 
from the latter port was by far the worst of the three 
we spent in our voyage to Naples. How we envied 
the happy people who went ashore at Leghorn ! I 
think we even envied the bones of the Venetians, 
Pisans, and Genoese who met and slew each other 
in the long-forgotten sea-fights, and sank too deeply 
through the waves to be stirred by their restless 
tumult. Every one has heard tell of how cross and 
treacherous a sea the Mediterranean is in winter, and 
my own belief is that he who has merely been sea- 
sick on the Atlantic should give the Mediterranean a 
trial before professing to have suffered everything of 
which human nature is capable. Our steamer was 
clean enough and stanch enough, but she was not 
large — no bigger, I thought, than a gondola, that 
night as the waves tossed her to and fro, till unwinged 
things took flight all through her cabins and over her 
decks. My berth was placed transversely instead of 
lengthwise with the boat, — an ingenious arrange- 



60 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

ment to heighten seasick horrors, and dash the blood 
of the sufferer from brain to boots with exaggerated 
violence at each roll of the boat ; and I begged the 
steward to let me sleep upon one of the lockers in 
the cabin. I found many of my agonized species 
already laid out there ; and there was something 
eldritch and unearthly in the whole business, and I 
think a kind of delirium must have resulted from 
the seasickness. Otherwise, I shall not know how 
to account for having attributed a kind of conscious- 
ness to the guide-book of a young American who 
had come aboard at Leghorn. He turned out after- 
ward to be the sweetest soul in the world, and I am 
sorry now that I regarded with amusement his failure 
to smoke off his sickness. He was reading his guide- 
book with great diligence and unconcern, when sud- 
denly I marked him lay it softly, softly down, with 
that excessive deliberation which men use at such 
times, and vanish with great dignity from the scene. 
Thus abandoned to its own devices, the guide-book 
began its night-long riots, setting out upon a tour of 
the cabin with the first lurch of the boat that threw 
it from the table upon the floor. I heard it careen at 
once wildly to the cabin door, and knock to get out ; 
and failing in this, return more deliberately to the 
stern of the boat, interrogating the tables and chairs, 
which had got their sea-legs on, and asking them how 
they found themselves. Arrived again at the point 
of starting, it seemed to pause a moment, and then I 
saw it setting forth on a voyage of pleasure in the 
low company of a French hat, which, being itself a 



FROM GENOA TO NAPLES 61 

French book, I suppose it liked. In these travels 
they both ran under the feet of one of the stewards 
and were replaced by an immense tour de force on 
the table, from which the book eloped again, — this 
time in company with an overcoat ; but it seemed 
the coat was too miserable to go far : it stretched 
itself at full length on the floor, and suffered the 
book to dance over it, back and forth, I know not 
how many times. At last, as the actions of the 
book were becoming unendurable, and the general 
seasickness was waxing into a frenzy, a heavy roll, 
that made the whole ship shriek and tremble, threw 
us all from our lockers ; and gathering myself up, 
bruised and sore in every fibre, I lay down again 
and became sensible of a blissful, blissful lull ; the 
machinery had stopped, and with the mute hope 
that we were all going to the bottom, I fell tran- 
quilly asleep. 

in 

It appeared that the storm had really been dan- 
gerous. Instead of being only six hours from 
Naples, as we ought to be at this time, we were got 
no further than Porto Longone, in the Isle of Elba. 
We woke in a quiet, sheltered little bay, whence 
we could only behold, not feel, the storm left far 
out upon the open sea. From this we turned our 
heavy eyes gladly to the shore, where a white little 
town was settled, like a flight of gulls upon the 
beach, at the feet of green and pleasant hills, whose 
gentle lines rhymed softly away against the sky. 



62 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

At the end of either arm of the embracing land in 
which we lay, stood gray, placid old forts, with 
peaceful sentries pacing their bastions, and weary 
ships creeping round their feet, under guns looking 
out so kindly and harmlessly, that I think General 
himself would not have hesitated (except, per- 
haps, from a profound sentiment of regret for offer- 
ing the violence) to attack them. Our port was 
full of frightened shipping — steamers, brigs, and 
schooners — of all sizes and nations ; and since it 
was our misfortune that Napoleon spent his exile 
in Elba at Porto Ferrato instead Porto Longone, 
we amused ourselves with looking at the vessels 
and the white town and the soft hills, instead of 
hunting up dead lion's tracks. 

Our fellow passengers began to develop them- 
selves : the regiment of soldiers whom we were 
transporting picturesquely breakfasted forward, and 
the second-cabin people came aft to our deck, while 
the English engineer (there are English engineers 
on all the Mediterranean steamers) planted a camp- 
stool in a sunny spot, and sat down to read the 
" Birmingham Express." 

Our friends of the second cabin were chiefly offi- 
cers with their wives and families, and they talked 
for the most part of their sufferings during the 
night. They spoke such exquisite Italian that I 
thought them Tuscans, but they told me they 
were of Sicily, where their beautiful speech first 
had life. Let us hear what they talked of in their 
divine language, and with that ineffable tonic accent 



FROM GENOA TO NAPLES 63 

which no foreigner perfectly acquires, and let us for 
once translate the profanities Pagan and Christian, 
which adorn common parlance in Italy : — 

" Ah, my God ! how much I suffered ! " says a 
sweet little woman with gentle brown eyes, red, red 
lips, and blameless Greek lines of face. " I broke 
two basins ! " 

" There were ten broken in all, by Diana ! " says 
this lady's sister. 

" Presence of the Devil ! " says her husband ; and 

" Body of Bacchus ! " her young brother, puffing 
his cigar. 

" And you, sir," said the lady, turning to a hand- 
some young fellow in civil dress, near her, "how 
did you pass this horrible night ? " 

" Oh ! " says the young man, twirling his heavy 
blond mustache, " mighty well, mighty well ! " 

" Oh, mercy of God ! You were not sick ? " 

" 1, signora, am never seasick. I am of the 
navy." 

At which they all cry oh, and ah, and declare 
they are glad of it, though why they should have 
been I don't know to this day. 

" I have often wished," added the young man 
meditatively, and in a serious tone, as if he had 
indeed given the subject much thought, "that it 
might please God to let me be seasick once, if only 
that I might know how it feels. But no ! " He 
turned the conversation, as if his disappointment 
were too sore to dwell upon ; and hearing our Eng- 
lish, he made out to let us know that he had been 



64 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

at New York, and could spik our language, which 
he proceeded to do, to the great pride of his country- 
men. 

IV 

We set out from Porto Longone that night at 
eight o'clock, and next evening, driving through 
much-abated storm southward into calm waters and 
clear skies, reached Naples. At noon, Monte Circeo, 
where Circe led her disreputable life, was a majestic 
rock against blue heaven and broken clouds ; after 
nightfall, and under the risen moon, Vesuvius crept 
softly up from the sea, and stood a graceful steep, 
with wreaths of lightest cloud upon its crest, and 
the city lamps circling far round its bay. 



raw Itl-zff 





VII. CERTAIN THINGS IN NAPLES 



PERHAPS some reader of mine who visited 
Naples under the old disorder of things, when 
the Bourbon and the Camorra reigned, will like to 
hear that the pitched battle which travelers formerly 
fought, in landing from their steamer, is now gone 
out of fashion. Less truculent boatmen I never saw 
than those who rowed us ashore at Naples ; they 
were so quiet and peaceful that they harmonized 
perfectly with that tranquil scene of drowsy-twink- 
ling city lights, slumbrous mountains, and calm sea, 
as they dipped softly toward us in the glare of the 
steamer's lamps. The mystery of this placidity had 
been already solved by our captain, whom I had 
asked what price I should bargain to pay from the 
steamer to the shore. "There is a tariff," said he, 



66 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

" and the boatmen keep to it. The Neapolitans are 
good people (buona gente), and only needed justice 
to make them obedient to the laws." I must say 
that I found this to be true. The fares of all public 
conveyances are now fixed, and the attempts which 
drivers occasionally make to cheat you seem to be 
rather the involuntary impulses of old habit than 
deliberate intentions to do you wrong. You pay 
what is due, and as your man merely rumbles inter- 
nally when you turn away, you must be a very timid 
signorin, indeed, if you buy his content with any- 
thing more. I fancy that all these things are now 
much better managed in Italy than in America, 
only we grumble at them there and stand them in 
silence at home. Every one can recall frightful in- 
stances of plunder, in which he was the victim, at 
New York — in which the robbery had none of the 
neatness of an operation, as it often has in Italy, but 
was a brutal mutilation. And then as regards civil- 
ity from the same kind of people in the two coun- 
tries, there is no comparison that holds in favor of 
us. All questions are readily and politely answered 
in Italian travel, and the servants of companies are 
required to be courteous to the public, whereas one 
is only too glad to receive a silent snub from such 
people at home. 

ii 

The first sun that rose after our arrival in Naples 
was mild and warm as a May sun, though we were 
quite in the heart of November. We early strolled 



CERTAIN THINGS IN NAPLES 67 

out under it into the crowded ways of the city, and 
drew near as we might to that restless, thronging 
gossiping southern life, in contrast with which all 
northern existence seems only a sort of hibernation. 
The long Toledo, on which the magnificence of mod- 
ern Naples is threaded, is the most brilliant and joy- 
ous street in the world ; but I think there is less of 
the quaintness of Italian civilization to be seen in its 
vivacious crowds than anywhere else in Italy. One 
easily understands how, with its superb length and 
straightness, and its fine, respectable, commonplace- 
looking houses, it should be the pride of a people 
fond of show ; but after Venice and Genoa it has no 
picturesque charm ; nay, even busy Milan seems less 
modern and more picturesque. The lines of the 
lofty palaces on the Toledo are seldom broken by 
the facade of a church or other public edifice ; and 
when this does happen, the building is sure to be 
coldly classic or frantically baroque. 

You weary of the Toledo's perfect repair, of its 
monotonous iron balconies, its monotonous lofty win- 
dows ; and it would be insufferable if you could not 
turn out from it at intervals into one of those won- 
drous little streets which branch up on one hand and 
down on the other, rising and falling with flights of 
steps between the high, many-balconied walls. They 
ring all day with the motleyest life of fishermen, 
fruit -venders, chestnut -roasters, and idlers of every 
age and sex ; and there is nothing so full of local 
color, unless it be the little up-and-down-hill streets 
in Genoa. Like those, the by-streets of Naples are 



68 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

meant only for foot-passengers, and a carriage never 
enters them ; but sometimes, you may see a mule 
climbing the long stairways, moving solemnly under 
a stack of straw, or tinkling gayly downstairs, be- 
stridden by a swarthy, handsome peasant — ail glit- 
tering teeth and eyes and flaming Phrygian cap. 
The rider exchanges lively salutations and sarcasms 
with the bystanders in his way, and perhaps brushes 
against the bagpipers who bray constantly in those 
hilly defiles. They are in Neapolitan costume, these 
pijferari, and have their legs incomprehensibly tied 
up in the stockings and garters affected by the pea- 
santry of the provinces, and wear brave red sashes 
about their waists. They are simple, harmless 
looking people, and would no doubt rob and kill in 
the most amiable manner, if brigandage came into 
fashion in their neighborhood. 

Sometimes the student of men may witness a Nea- 
politan quarrel in these streets, and may pick up use- 
ful ideas of invective from the remarks of the fat old 
women who always take part in the contests. But, 
though we were ten days in Naples, I only saw one 
quarrel, and I could have heard much finer violence 
of language among the gondoliers at any ferry in 
Venice than I heard in this altercation. 

The Neapolitans are, of course, furious in traffic. 
They sell a great deal, and very boisterously, the 
fruit of the cactus, which is about as large as an egg, 
and which they peel to a very bloody pulp, and lay 
out, a sanguinary presence, on boards for purchase. 
It is not good to the uncultivated taste ; but the 



CERTAIN THINGS IN NAPLES 69 

stranger may stop and drink, with relish and refresh- 
ment, the orangeade and lemonade mixed with snow 
and sold at the little booths on the street corners. 
These stands look much like the shrines of the Ma- 
donna in other Italian cities, and a friend of ours 
was led, before looking carefully into their office, to 
argue immense Neapolitan piety from the frequency 
of their ecclesiastical architecture. They are, in- 
deed, the shrines of a god much worshiped during 
the long Neapolitan summers ; and it was the pro- 
found theory of the Bourbon kings of Naples, that, 
if they kept their subjects well supplied with snow 
to cool their drink, there was no fear of revolution. 
It shows how liable statesmen are to err, that, after 
all, the Neapolitans rose, drove out the Bourbons, 
and welcomed Garibaldi. 

The only part of the picturesque life of the side 
streets which seems ever to issue from them into 
the Toledo is the goatherd with his flock of milch- 
goats, which mingle with the passers in the avenues 
as familiarly as with those of the alley, and thrust 
aside silk-hidden hoops, and brush against dandies' 
legs in their course, but keep on perfect terms with 
everybody. The goatherd leads the eldest of the 
flock, and the rest follow in docile order, and stop 
as he stops to ask at the doors if milk is wanted. 
When he happens to have an order, one of the goats 
is haled, much against her will, into the entry of a 
house, and there milked, while the others wait out- 
side alone, nibbling and smelling thoughtfully about 
the masonry. It is noticeable that none of the good- 



?o ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

natured passers seem to think these goats a great 
nuisance in the crowded street ; but all make way 
for them as if they were there by perfect right, and 
were no inconvenience. 

On the Toledo, people keep upon the narrow 
sidewalks, or strike out into the carriageway, with 
an indifference to hoofs and wheels which one, after 
long residence in tranquil Venice, cannot acquire, in 
view of the furious Neapolitan driving. That old 
comprehensive gig of Naples, with which many pens 
and pencils have familiarized the reader, is nearly as 
hard to find there now as the lazzaroni, who have 
gone out altogether. You may still see it in the 
remoter quarters of the city, with its complement of 
twelve passengers to one horse, distributed, two on 
each thill, four on the top seats, one at each side, 
and two behind ; but in the Toledo it has given 
place to much finer vehicles. Slight buggies, which 
take you anywhere for half a franc, are the favorite 
means of public conveyance, and the private turn- 
outs are of every description and degree. Indeed, 
all the Neapolitans take to carriages, and the Strand 
in London at six o'clock in the evening is not a 
greater jam of wheels than the Toledo in the after- 
noon. Shopping feels the expansive influence of 
the out-of-doors life, and ladies do most of it as they 
sit in their open carriages at the shop-doors, minis- 
tered to by the neat-handed shopmen. They are 
very languid ladies, as they recline upon their car- 
riage cushions ; they are all black-eyed, and of an 
olive pallor, and have gloomy rings about their 



CERTAIN THINGS IN NAPLES 71 

fine eyes, like the dark-faced dandies who bow to 
them. This Neapolitan look is very curious, and I 
have not seen it elsewhere in Italy ; it is a look of 
peculiar pensiveness, and comes, no doubt, from 
the peculiarly heavy growth of lashes which fringes 
the lower eyelid. Then there is the weariness in it 
of all peoples whose summers are fierce and long. 

As the Italians usually dress beyond their means, 
the dandies of Naples are very gorgeous. If it is 
now, say, four o'clock in the afternoon, they are all 
coming down the Toledo with the streams of car- 
riages bound for the long drive around the bay. 
But our foot-passers go to walk in the beautiful Villa 
Reale, between this course and the sea. The Villa 
is a slender strip of Paradise, a mile long ; it is rap- 
ture to walk in it, and it comes, in description, to 
be a garden-grove, with feathery palms, Greekish 
temples, musical fountains, white statues of the gods, 
and groups of fair girls in spring silks. If I remem- 
ber aright, the sun is always setting on the bay, and 
you cannot tell whether this sunset is cooled by the 
water or the water is warmed by the golden light 
upon it, and upon the city, and upon all the soft 
mountain-heights around. 

in 

Walking westward through the whole length of 
the Villa Reale, and keeping with the crescent shore 
of the bay, you come, after a while, to the Grot of 
Posilippo, which is not a grotto but a tunnel cut for 
a carriageway under the hill. It serves, however, 



72 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

the purpose of a grotto, if a grotto has any, and is 
of great length and dimness and is all a-twinkle 
night and day with numberless lamps. Overlooking 
the street which passes into it is the tomb of Virgil, 
and it is this you have come to see. To reach it, 
you knock first at the door of a blacksmith, who 
calls a species of custodian, and, when this latter 
has opened a gate in a wall, you follow him up- 
stairs into a market-garden. 

In one corner, and standing in a leafy and grassy 
shelter somewhat away from the vegetables, is the 
poet's tomb, which has a kind of claim to genuine- 
ness by virtue of its improbable appearance. It 
looks more like a bake-oven than even the Pompeian 
tombs ; the masonry is antique, and is at least in 
skillful imitation of the fine Roman work. The 
interior is a small chamber with vaulted or wagon- 
roof ceiling, under which a man may stand upright, 
and at the end next the street is a little stone, com- 
memorating the place as Virgil's tomb, which was 
placed there by the Queen of France in 1840, and 
said by the custodian to be an exact copy of the 
original, whatever the original may have been. 
This guide could tell us nothing more about it, and 
was too stupidly honest to pretend to know more. 
The laurel planted by Petrarch at the door of the 
tomb, and renewed in later times by Casimir Dela- 
vigne, has been succeeded by a third laurel. The 
present twig was so slender, and looked so friendless 
and unprotected, that even enthusiasm for the mem- 
ory of two poets could not be brought to rob it of 






CERTAIN THINGS IN NAPLES 73 

one of its few leaves ; and we contented ourselves 
with plucking some of the grass and weeds that 
grew abundantly on the roof of the tomb. 

There was a dusty quiet within the tomb, and a 
grassy quiet without, that pleased exceedingly ; but 
though the memories of the place were so high and 
epic, it only suggested bucolic associations, and, 
sunken into that nook of hillside verdure, made me 
think of a spring-house on some far-away Ohio 
farm ; a thought that, perhaps, would not have of- 
fended the poet, who loved and sang of humble 
country things, and, drawing wearily to his rest 
here, no doubt turned and remembered tenderly the 
rustic days before the excellent veterans of Augus- 
tus came to exile him from his father's farm at 
Mantua, and banish him to mere glory. But I be- 
lieve most travelers have much nobler sensations 
in Virgil's tomb, and there is a great deal of tes- 
timony borne to their lofty sentiments on every 
scribbleable inch of its walls. Valery reminded me 
that Boccaccio, standing near it of old, first felt his 
fate decided for literature. Did he come there, I 
wonder, with poor Fiammetta, and enter the tomb 
with her tender hand in his, before ever he thought 
of that cruel absence she tells of? "O donne 
pietose ! " I hope so, and that this pilgrimage, half 
of love and half of letters, took place, " nel tempo 
nel quale la rivestita terra piu che tutto l'altro anno 
si mostra bella." 

If you ascend from the tomb and turn Naples- 
ward from the crest of the hill, you have the loveli- 



74 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

est view in the world of the sea and of the crescent 
beach, mightily jeweled at its further horn with the 
black Castel deir Ovo. Fishermen's children are 
playing all along the foamy border of the sea, and 
boats are darting out into the surf. The present 
humble muse is not above saying also that the linen 
which the laundresses hang to dry upon lines along 
the beach takes the sun like a dazzling flight of 
white birds, and gives a breezy life to the scene 
which it could not spare. 

IV 

There was a little church on our way back from 
Posilippo, into which we lounged a moment, pausing 
at the altar of some very successful saint near the 
door. Here there were great numbers of the usual 
offerings from the sick whom the saint had eased of 
their various ills, — waxen legs and arms from 
people who had been in peril of losing their limbs, 
as well as eyes, noses, fingers, and feet, and the 
crutches of those cured of lameness ; but we were 
most amused with the waxen effigies of several en- 
tire babies hung up about the altar, which the poor 
souls who had been near losing the originals had 
brought there in gratitude to the saint. 

Generally, however, the churches of Naples are 
not very interesting, and one who came away with- 
out seeing them would have little to regret. The 
pictures are seldom good, and though there are mag- 
nificent chapels in St. Januarius, and fine Gothic 
tombs at Santa Chiara, the architecture is usually 






CERTAIN THINGS IN NAPLES 75 

rococo. I fancy that Naples has felt the damage 
of Spanish taste in such things as well as Spanish 
tyranny in others. At any rate, all Italian writers 
are agreed in attributing the depravation of Naples 
to the long Spanish dominion. It is well known 
how the Spaniards rule their provinces, and their 
gloomy despotism was probably never more cruelly 
felt than in Italy, where the people were least able 
to bear it. I had a heartfelt exultation in walking 
through the quarter of the city where the tumults 
of Nassaniello had raged, and, if only for a few days, 
struck mortal terror to the brutal pride of the vice- 
roy ; but I think I had a better sense of the im- 
mense retribution which has overtaken all memory 
of Spanish rule in Naples as we passed through the 
palace of Capo di Monte. This was the most splen- 
did seat of the Spanish Bourbon, whose family, in- 
heriting its power from the violence of other times, 
held it with violence in these ; and in one of the 
chief saloons of the palace, which is now Victor 
Emanuel's, were pictures representing scenes of 
the revolution of i860, while the statuette of a Gari- 
baldino, in his red shirt and all his heroic rudeness, 
was defiantly conspicuous on one of the tables. 



There was nothing else that pleased me as well 
in the palace, or in the grounds about it. These 
are laid out in pleasant successions of grove, tan- 
gled wilderness, and pasture-land, and were thronged, 
the Saturday afternoon of our visit, with all ranks 



76 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

of people, who strolled through the beautiful walks 
and enjoyed themselves in the peculiarly peaceful 
Italian way. Valery says that the Villa Reale in 
the Bourbon time was closed, except for a single 
day in the year, to all but the nobles ; and that on 
this occasion it was filled with pretty peasant wo- 
men, who made it a condition of their marriage 
bargains that their husbands should bring them to 
the Villa Reale on St. Mary's Day. It is now free 
to all on every day of the year, and the grounds of 
the Palace Capo di Monte are opened every Satur- 
day. I liked the pleasant way in which sylvan 
Nature and Art had made friends in these beauti- 
ful grounds, in which Nature had consented to 
overlook the vanity of the long aisles of lime, cut 
and trimmed in formal and fantastic shapes, accord- 
ing to the taste of the times of bagwigs and patches. 
On every side wild birds fluttered through these ab- 
surd trees, and in the thickets lurked innumerable 
pheasants, which occasionally issued forth and 
stalked in stately, fearless groups over the sunset- 
crimsoned lawns. There was a brown gamekeeper 
for nearly every head of game, wearing a pheasant's 
wing in his hat and carrying a short, heavy sword; 
and our driver told us, with an awful solemnity in 
his bated breath, that no one might kill this game 
but the king, under penalty of the galleys. 



VI 



The Italians are simple and natural folks, pleased 
through all their show of conventionality with little 









CERTAIN THINGS IN NAPLES 77 

things, and as easy and unconscious as children in 
their ways. There happened to be a new caffe 
opened in Naples while we were there, and we had 
the pleasure of seeing all ranks of people affected by 
its magnificence. Artless throngs blocked the side- 
walk day and night before its windows, gazing upon 
its mirrors, fountains, and frescoes, and regarding 
the persons over their coffee within as beings lifted 
by sudden magic out of the common orbit of life 
and set dazzling in a higher sphere. All the waiters 
were uniformed and brass-buttoned to blinding ef- 
fect, and the head waiter was a majestic creature in 
a long blue coat reaching to his feet, and armed 
with a mighty silver-headed staff. This gorgeous 
apparition did nothing but walk up and down, and 
occasionally advance toward the door, as if to dis- 
perse the crowds. At such times, however, before 
executing his purpose, he would glance round on 
the splendors they were admiring, and, as if smitten 
with a sense of the enormous cruelty he had medi- 
tated in thinking to deprive them of the sight, would 
falter and turn away, leaving his intent unfulfilled. 




*J*&" 



VIIL A DAY IN POMPEII 



ON the second morning after our arrival in Na- 
ples, we took the seven o'clock train, which 
leaves the Nineteenth Century for the first cycle 
of the Christian Era, and, skirting the waters of the 
Neapolitan bay almost the whole length of our jour- 
ney, reached the railway station of Pompeii in an 
hour. As we rode along by that bluest sea, we saw 
the fishing-boats go out, and the foamy waves (which 
it would be violence to call breakers) come in ; we 
saw the mountains slope their tawny and golden 
manes caressingly downward to the waters, where 
the islands were dozing yet ; and landward, on the 
left, we saw Vesuvius, with his brown mantle of 
ashes drawn close about his throat, reclining on the 



A DAY IN POMPEII 79 

plain, and smoking a bland and thoughtful morning 
pipe, of which the silver fumes curled lightly, lightly- 
upward in the sunrise. 

We dismounted at the station, walked a few rods 
eastward through a little cotton-field, and found our- 
selves at the door of Hotel Diomed, where we took 
breakfast for a number of sesterces which I am sure 
it would have made an ancient Pompeian stir in his 
urn to think of paying. But in Italy one learns the 
chief Italian virtue, patience, and we paid our ac- 
count with the utmost good-nature. There was 
compensation in store for us, and the guide whom 
we found at the gate leading up the little hill to 
Pompeii inclined the disturbed balance in favor of 
our happiness. He was a Roman, spoke Italian 
that Beatrice might have addressed to Dante, and 
was numbered Twenty-six. I suppose it is known 
that the present Italian government forbids people 
to be pillaged in any way on its premises, and that 
the property of the state is no longer the traffic of 
custodians and their pitiless race. At Pompeii each 
person pays two francs for admission, and is rigor- 
ously forbidden by recurrent sign-boards to offer 
money to the guides. Ventisei (as we shall call him) 
himself pointed out one of these notices in English, 
and did his duty faithfully without asking or receiv- 
ing fees in money. He was a soldier, like all the 
other guides, and was a most intelligent, obliging 
fellow, with a self-respect and dignity worthy of one 
of our own volunteer soldiers. 

Ventisei took us up the winding slope, and led us 



80 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

out of this living world through the Sea-gate of 
Pompeii back into the dead past — the past which, 
with all its sensuous beauty and grace, and all its 
intellectual power, one is not sorry to have dead, 
and, for the most part, buried. Our feet had hardly 
trodden the lava flagging of the narrow streets when 
we came in sight of the laborers who were exhum- 
ing the inanimate city. They were few in number, 
not perhaps a score, and they worked tediously, with 
baskets to carry away the earth from the excavation, 
boys and girls carrying the baskets, and several 
athletic old women plying picks, while an overseer 
sat in a chair near by, and smoked, and directed 
their exertions. 

They dig down about eight or ten feet, uncover- 
ing the walls and pillars of the houses, and the 
mason, who is at hand, places little iron rivets in 
the stucco to prevent its fall where it is weak, while 
an artist attends to wash and clean the frescoes as 
fast as they are exposed. The soil through which 
the excavation first passes is not of great depth ; 
the ashes which fell damp with scalding rain, in the 
second eruption, are perhaps five feet thick ; the 
rest is of that porous stone which descended in small 
fragments during the first eruption. A depth of 
at least two feet in this stone is always left un- 
touched by the laborers till the day when the chief 
superintendent of the work comes out from Naples 
to see the last layers removed ; and it is then that 
the beautiful mosaic pavements of the houses are 
uncovered, and the interesting and valuable objects 
are nearly always found. 



A DAY IN POMPEII 81 

The wonder was, seeing how slowly the work pro- 
ceeded, not that two thirds of Pompeii were yet 
buried, but that one third had been exhumed. We 
left these hopeless toilers, and went down-town into 
the Forum, stepping aside on the way to look into 
one of the Pompeian Courts of Common Pleas. 

ii 

Pompeii is so full of marvel and surprise, in fact, 
that it would be unreasonable to express disappoint- 
ment with Pompeii in fiction. And yet I cannot help 
it. An exuberant carelessness of phrase in most 
writers and talkers who describe it had led me to ex- 
pect much more than it was possible to find there. In 
my Pompeii I confess that the houses had no roofs 
— in fact, the rafters which sustained the tiles being 
burnt, how could the roofs help falling in ? But 
otherwise my Pompeii was a very complete affair : 
the walls all rose to their full height ; doorways and 
arches were perfect ; the columns were all unbroken 
and upright ; putting roofs on my Pompeii, you might 
have lived in it very comfortably. The real Pom- 
peii is different. It is seldom that any wall is un- 
broken ; most columns are fragmentary ; and though 
the ground-plans are always distinct, very few rooms 
in the city are perfect in form, and the whole is 
much more ruinous than I thought. 

But this ruin once granted, and the idle disap- 
pointment at its greatness overcome, there is end- 
less material for study, instruction, and delight. It 
is the revelation of another life, and the utterance 



82 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

of the past is here more perfect than anywhere else 
in the world. I think that the true friend of Pom- 
peii should make it a matter of conscience, on enter- 
ing the enchanted city, to cast out of his knowledge 
all the rubbish that has fallen into it from novels 
and travels, and to keep merely the facts of the 
town's luxurious life and agonizing death, with such 
incidents of the eruption as he can remember from 
the description of Pliny. There are the spells to 
which the sorcery yields, and with these in your 
thought you can rehabilitate the city until Ventisei 
seems to be a valet de place oi the first century, and 
yourselves a set of blond barbarians to whom he 
is showing off the splendors of one of the most bril- 
liant towns of the empire of Titus. Those silent 
furrows in the pavement become vocal with the joy- 
ous rattle of chariot-wheels on a sudden, and you 
prudently step up on the narrow sidewalks and rub 
along by the little shops of wine, and grain, and oil, 
with which the thrifty voluptuaries of Pompeii 
flanked their street-doors. The counters of the 
shops run across their fronts, and are pierced with 
round holes on the top, through which you see dark 
depths of oil in the jars below, and not sullen lumps 
of ashes ; those stately amphorce behind are full of 
wine, and in the corners are bags of wheat. 

" This house, with a shop on either side, whose is 
it, XXVI. ? " 

" It is the house of the great Sallust, my masters. 
Would you like his autograph ? I know one of his 
slaves who would sell it." 



A DAY IN POMPEII 83 

You are a good deal stared at, naturally, as you 
pass by, for people in Pompeii have not much to do, 
and, besides, a Briton is not an every-day sight there, 
as he will be one of these centuries. The skins of 
wild beasts are little worn in Pompeii, and those 
bold-eyed Roman women think it rather odd that we 
should like to powder our shaggy heads with brick- 
dust. However, these are matters of taste. We, 
for our part, cannot repress a feeling of disgust at 
the loungers in the street, who, XXVI. tells us, are 
all going to soak themselves half the day in the 
baths yonder ; for, if there is in Pompeii one thing 
more offensive than another to our savage sense of 
propriety, it is the personal cleanliness of the inhab- 
itants. We little know what a change for the better 
will be wrought in these people with the lapse of 
time, and that they will yet come to wash themselves 
but once a year, as we do. 

(The reader may go on doing this sort of thing 
at some length for himself ; and may imagine, if he 
pleases, a boastful conversation among the Pom- 
peians at the baths, in which the barbarians hear 
how Agricola has broken the backbone of a rebellion 
in Britain ; and in which all the speakers begin 
their observations with "Ho! my Lepidus ! " and 
" Ha! my Diomed ! " In the mean time we return 
to the present day, and step down the Street of 
Plenty along with Ventisei.) 



84 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

in 

It is proper, after seeing the sites of some of the 
principal temples in Pompeii (such as those of Jupi- 
ter and Venus), to cross the fields that cover a great 
breadth of the buried city, and look into the amphi- 
theatre, where, as everybody knows, the lions had 
no stomach for Glaucus on the morning of the fatal 
eruption. The fields are now planted with cotton, 
and of course we thought those commonplaces about 
the wonder the Pompeians would feel could they 
come back to see that New World plant growing 
above their buried homes. We might have told 
them, the day of our visit, that this cruel plant, so 
long watered with the tears of slaves, and fed with 
the blood of men, was now an exile from its native 
fields, where war was ploughing with sword and shot 
the guilty land, and rooting up the subtlest fibres of 
the oppression in which cotton had grown king. 

But the only Pompeian presences which haunted 
our passage of the cotton-field were certain small 

" Phantoms of delight," 

with soft black eyes and graceful wiles, who ran 
before us and plucked the bolls of the cotton and 
sold them to us. Embassies bearing red and white 
grapes were also sent out of the cottages to our 
excellencies ; and there was some doubt of the cur- 
rency of the coin which we gave these poor children 
in return. 

There are now but few peasants living on the 






A DAY IN POMPEII 85 

land over the head of Pompeii, and the government 
allows no sales of real estate to be made except to 
itself. The people who still dwell here can hardly 
be said to own their possessions, for they are merely 
allowed to cultivate the soil A guard stationed 
night and day prevents them from making excava- 
tions, and they are severely restricted from entering 
the excavated quarters of the city alone. 

The cotton whitens over two thirds of Pompeii yet 
interred : happy the generation that lives to learn 
the wondrous secrets of that sepulchre ! For, when 
you have once been at Pompeii, this phantasm of 
the past takes deeper hold on your imagination than 
any living city, and becomes and is the metropolis 
of your dreamland forever. O marvelous city ! who 
shall reveal the cunning of your spell ? Something 
not death, something not life — something that is 
the one when you turn to determine its essence as 
the other ! What is it comes to me at this distance 
of that which I saw in Pompeii? The narrow and 
curving, but not crooked streets, with the blazing 
sun of that Neapolitan November falling into them, 
or clouding their wheel-worn lava with the black, 
black shadows of the many-tinted walls ; the houses, 
and the gay columns of white, yellow, and red ; the 
delicate pavements of mosaic ; the skeletons of dusty 
cisterns and dead fountains ; inanimate garden 
spaces with pygmy statues suited to their littleness ; 
suites of fairy bed-chambers, painted with exquisite 
frescoes; dining-halls with joyous scenes of hunt and 
banquet on their walls ; the ruinous sites of temples ; 



86 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

the melancholy emptiness of booths and shops and 
jolly drinking-houses ; the lonesome tragic theatre, 
with a modern Pompeian drawing water from a well 
there ; the baths with their roofs perfect yet, and 
the stucco bas-reliefs all but unharmed ; around 
the whole, the city wall crowned with slender pop- 
lars ; outside the gates, the long avenue of tombs, 
and the Appian Way stretching on to Stabiae ; and, 
in the distance, Vesuvius, brown and bare, with his 
fiery breath scarce visible against the cloudless 
heaven; — these are the things that float before 
my fancy as I turn back to look at myself walking 
those enchanted streets, and to wonder if I could 
ever have been so blest. 

The amphitheatre, to which we came now, after 
our stroll across the cotton-fields, was small, like the 
vastest things in Pompeii, and had nothing of the 
stately magnificence of the Arena at Verona, nor 
anything of the Roman Coliseum's melancholy and 
ruinous grandeur. But its littleness made it all the 
more comfortable and social, and, seated upon its 
benches under a cool awning, one could have almost 
chatted across the arena with one's friends ; could 
have witnessed the spectacle on the sands without 
losing a movement of the quick gladiators, or an 
agony of the victim given to the beasts — which 
must have been very delightful to a Pompeian of 
companionable habits. It is quite impossible, how- 
ever, that the bouts described by Bulwer as taking 
place all at the same time on the arena should 
really have done so : the combatants would have 



A DAY IN POMPEII 87 

rolled and tumbled and trampled over each other an 
hundred times in the narrow space. 

Of all the voices with which it once rang the poor 
little amphitheatre has kept only an echo. But this 
echo is one of the most perfect ever heard ; prompt, 
clear, startling, it blew back the light chaff we threw 
to it with amazing vehemence, and almost made us 
doubt if it were not a direct human utterance. Yet 
how was Ventisei to know our names ? And there 
was no one else to call them but ourselves. Our 
" dolce duca" gathered a nosegay from the crum- 
bling ledges, and sat down in the cool of the once- 
cruel cells beneath, and put it prettily together for 
the ladies. When we had wearied ourselves with 
the echo he arose and led us back into Pompeii. 

IV 

The plans of nearly all the houses in the city are 
alike : the entrance-room next the door ; the parlor 
or drawing-room next that ; then the impluvium, or 
unroofed space in the middle of the house, where 
the rains were caught and drained into the cistern, 
and where the household used to come to wash 
itself, primitively, as at a pump ; the little garden, 
with its painted columns, behind the impluvium, 
and, at last, the dining-room. There are minute 
bed-chambers on either side, and, as I said, a shop 
at one side in front, for the sale of the master's 
grain, wine, and oil. The pavements of all the 
houses are of mosaic, which, in the better sort, is 
very delicate and beautiful, and is found sometimes 



88 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

perfectly uninjured. Of course there were many 
picturesque and fanciful designs, of which the best 
have been removed to the Museum in Naples ; but 
several good ones are still left, and (like that of the 
Wild Boar) give names to the houses in which they 
are found. 

But, after all, the great wonder, the glory, of these 
Pompeian houses is in their frescoes. If I tried to 
give an idea of the luxury of color in Pompeii, the 
most gorgeous adjectives would be as poorly able to 
reproduce a vivid and glowing sense of those hues 
as the photography which now copies the drawing 
of the decorations ; so I do not try. 

I know it is a cheap and feeble thought, and yet, 
let the reader please to consider : A workman nearly 
two thousand years laying upon the walls those soft 
lines that went to make up fauns and satyrs, nymphs 
and naiads, heroes and gods and goddesses ; and 
getting weary and lying down to sleep, and dream- 
ing of an eruption of the mountain ; of the city buried 
under a fiery hail, and slumbering in its bed of ashes 
seventeen centuries ; then of its being slowly ex- 
humed, and, after another lapse of years, of some 
one coming to gather the shadow of that dreamer's 
work upon a plate of glass, that he might infinitely 
reproduce it and sell it to tourists at from five francs 
to fifty centimes a copy — I say, consider such a 
dream dreamed in the hot heart of the day, after 
certain cups of Vesuvian wine! What a piece of 
Katzenjammer (I can use no milder term) would 
that workman think it when he woke again ! Alas 



A DAY IN POMPEII 89 

what is history and the progress of the arts and 
sciences but one long Katzenjammer ! 

Photography cannot give, any more than I, the 
colors of the frescoes, but it can do the drawing 
better, and, I suspect, the spirit also. I used the 
word workman, and not artist, in speaking of the 
decoration of the walls, for in most cases the painter 
was only an artisan, and did his work probably by 
the yard, as the artisan who paints walls and ceilings 
in Italy does at this day. But the old workman did 
his work much more skillfully and tastefully than 
the modern — threw on expanses of mellow color, 
delicately paneled off the places for the scenes, and 
penciled in the figures and draperies (there are 
usually more of the one than the other) with a deft 
hand. Of course, the houses of the rich were 
adorned by men of talent ; but it is surprising to 
see the community of thought and feeling in all this 
work, whether it be from cunninger or clumsier 
hands. The subjects are nearly always chosen from 
the fables of the gods, and they are in illustration 
of the poets, Homer and the rest. To suit that 
soft, luxurious life which people led in Pompeii, the 
themes are commonly amorous, and sometimes not 
too chaste; there is much of Bacchus and Ariadne, 
much of Venus and Adonis, and Diana bathes a 
good deal with her nymphs, — not to mention fre- 
quent representations of the toilet of that beautiful 
monster which the lascivious art of the time loved 
to depict. One of the most pleasing of all the 
scenes is that in one of the houses, of the Judgment 



90 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

of Paris, in which the shepherd sits upon a bank in 
an attitude of ineffable and flattered importance, 
with one leg carelessly crossing the other, and both 
hands resting lightly on his shepherd's crook, while 
the goddesses before him await his sentence. Nat- 
urally the painter has done his best for the victress 
in this rivalry, and you see 

" Idalian Aphrodite beautiful," 

as she should be, but with a warm and piquant spice 
of girlish resentment in her attitude, that Paris 
should pause for an instant, which is altogether 
delicious. 

" And I beheld great Here's angry eyes." 

Awful eyes ! How did the painter make them ? The 
wonder of all these pagan frescoes is the mystery of 
the eyes — still, beautiful, unhuman. You cannot be- 
lieve that it is wrong for those tranquil-eyed men and 
women to do evil, they look so calm and so uncon- 
scious in it all ; and in the presence of the celestials, 
as they bend upon you those eternal orbs, in whose 
regard you are but a part of space, you feel that here 
art has achieved the unearthly. I know of no words 
in literature which give a sense (nothing gives the 
idea) of the stare of these gods, except that mag- 
nificent line of Kingsley's, describing the advance 
over the sea toward Andromeda of the oblivious and 
unsympathizing Nereids. They floated slowly up, 
and their eyes 

" Stared on her, silent and still, like the eyes in the house of the 
idols." 



A DAY IN POMPEII 91 

The colors of this fresco of the Judgment of Paris 
are still so fresh and bright, that it photographs 
very well, but there are other frescoes wherein there 
is more visible perfection of line, but in which the 
colors are so dim that they can only be reproduced 
by drawings. One of these is the Wounded Adonis 
cared for by Venus and the Loves; in which the 
story is treated with a playful pathos wonderfully 
charming. The fair boy leans in the languor of his 
hurt toward Venus ; who sits utterly disconsolate 
beside him, while the Cupids busy themselves with 
such slight surgical offices as Gupids may render : 
one prepares a linen bandage for the wound, another 
wraps it round the leg of Adonis, another supports 
one of his heavy arms, another finds his own emo- 
tions too much for him and pauses to weep. It is a 
pity that the colors of this beautiful fresco are grown 
so dim, and a greater pity that most of the other 
frescoes in Pompeii must share its fate, and fade 
away. The hues are vivid when the walls are first 
uncovered, and the ashes washed from the pictures, 
but then the malice of the elements begins anew, 
and rain and sun draw the life out of tints which the 
volcano failed to obliterate. 

Among the frescoes which told no story but their 
own, we were most pleased with one in a delicately 
painted little bed-chamber. This represented an 
alarmed and furtive man, whom we at once pro- 
nounced The Belated Husband, opening a door with 
a night-latch. Nothing could have been better than 
this miserable wretch's cowardly haste and cautious 



92 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

noiselessness in applying his key ; apprehension sat 
upon his brow, confusion dwelt in his guilty eye. 
He had been out till two o'clock in the morning, 
electioneering for Pansa, the friend of the people 
("Pansa, and Roman gladiators," "Pansa, and 
Christians to the Beasts/' was the platform), and he 
had left his placens uxor at home alone with the 
children, and now within this door that placens uxor 
awaited him ! 



You have read, no doubt, of their discovering, a 
year or two since, in making an excavation in a 
Pompeian street, the moulds of four human bodies, 
three women and a man, who fell down, blind and 
writhing, in the storm of fire eighteen hundred years 
ago ; whose shape the settling and hardening ashes 
took ; whose flesh wasted away, and whose bones lay 
there in the hollow of the matrix till the cunning of 
this time found them, and, pouring liquid plaster 
round the skeletons, clothed them with human form 
again, and drew them forth into the world once 
more. There are many things, in Pompeii which 
bring back the gay life of the city, but nothing which 
so vividly reports the terrible manner of her death 
as these effigies of the creatures that actually shared 
it. The man in the last struggle has thrown him- 
self upon his back, and taken his doom sturdily — 
there is a sublime calm in his rigid figure. The 
women lie upon their faces, their limbs tossed and 
distorted, their drapery tangled and heaped about 



A DAY IN POMPEII 93 

them, and in every fibre you see how hard they died. 
One presses her face into her handkerchief to draw 
one last breath unmixed with scalding steam ; an- 
other's arms are wildly thrown abroad to clutch at 
help; another's hand is appealingly raised, and on 
her slight fingers you see the silver hoops with which 
her poor dead vanity adorned them. 

The guide takes you aside from the street into the 
house where they lie, and a dreadful shadow drops 
upon your heart as you enter their presence. With- 
out, the hell-storm seems to fall again, and the whole 
sunny plain to be darkened with its ruin, and the 
city to send up the tumult of her despair. 

What is there left in Pompeii to speak of after 
this ? The long street of tombs outside the walls ? 
Those that died before the city's burial seem to have 
scarcely a claim to the solemnity of death. 

Shall we go see Diomed's Villa, and walk through 
the freedman's long underground vaults, where his 
friends thought to be safe, and were smothered in 
heaps ? The garden-ground grows wild among its 
broken columns with weeds and poplar saplings ; in 
one of the corridors they sell photographs, on which, 
if you please, Ventisei has his bottle, or drink- 
money. So we escape from the doom of the calam- 
ity, and so, at last the severely forbidden buonamano 
is paid. 

We return slowly through the city, where we have 
spent the whole day, from nine till four o'clock. 
We linger on the way, imploring Ventisei if there is 
not something to be seen in this or that house ; we 



94 



ITALIAN JOURNEYS 



make our weariness an excuse for sitting down, and 
cannot rend ourselves from the bliss of being in 
Pompeii. 

At last we leave its gates, and swear each other 
to come again many times while in Naples, and never 
go again. 

Perhaps it was as well. You cannot repeat great 
happiness. 




IX. A HALF-HOUR AT HERCULANEUM 



THE road from Naples to Herculaneum is, in 
fact, one long street ; it hardly ceases to be 
city in Naples till it is town at Portici, and in the 
interval it is suburb running between palatial lines 
of villas, which all have their names ambitiously 
painted over their doors. Great part of the distance 
this street is bordered by the bay, and, as far as 
this is the case, it is picturesque, as everything is 
belonging to marine life in Italy. Seafaring people 
go lounging up and down among the fishermen's 
boats drawn up on the shore, and among the fisher- 
men's wives making nets, while the fishermen's chil- 
dren play and clamber everywhere, and over all flap 
and flutter the clothes hung on poles to dry. In this 



96 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

part of the street there are, of course, oysters, and 
grapes, and oranges, and cactus pulps, and cutlery, 
and iced drinks to sell at various booths ; and Com- 
merce is exceedingly dramatic and boisterous over 
the bargains she offers ; and equally, of course, 
drinking shops lurk at intervals along the pavement, 
and lure into their recesses mariners of foreign birth, 
briefly ashore from their ships. The New York 
Coffee House is there to attract my maritime fellow- 
countrymen, and I know that if I look into that 
place of refreshment I shall see their honest, fool- 
ish faces flushed with drink, and with the excite- 
ment of buying the least they can for the most 
money. Poor souls ! they shall drink that pleasant 
morning away in the society of Antonino the best 
of Neapolitans, and at midnight, emptied of every 
soldo, shall arise, wrung with a fearful suspicion of 
treachery, and wander away under Antonino's guid- 
ance to seek the protection of the consul ; or, tak- 
ing the law into their own hands, shall proceed to 
clean out, more Americano, the New York Coffee 
House, when Antonino shall develop into one of the 
landlords, and deal them the most artistic stab in 
Naples : handsome, worthy Antonino ; tender-eyed, 
subtle, pitiless ! 

ii 

Where the road to Herculaneum leaves the bay 
and its seafaring life, it enters, between the walls of 
lofty fly-blown houses, a world of maccaroni haunted 
by foul odors, beggars, and poultry. There were 






AT HERCULANEUM 97 

few people to be seen on the street, but through the 
open doors of the lofty fly-blown houses we saw 
floury legions at work making maccaroni ; grinding 
maccaroni, rolling it, cutting it, hanging it in mighty 
skeins to dry, and gathering it when dried, and put- 
ting it away. By the frequency of the wine-shops 
we judged that the legions were a thirsty host, and 
by the number of the barber-surgeons' shops, that 
they were a plethoric and too full-blooded host. 
The latter shops were in the proportion of one to 
five of the former ; and the artist who had painted 
their signs had indulged his fancy in wild excesses 
of phlebotomy. We had found that, as we came 
south from Venice, science grew more and more 
sanguinary in Italy, and more and more disposed to 
let blood. At Ferrara, even, the propensity began 
to be manifest on the barbers' signs, which displayed 
the device of an arm lanced at the elbow, and jetting 
the blood by a neatly described curve into a tum- 
bler. Further south the same arm was seen to bleed 
at the wrist also ; and at Naples an exhaustive treat- 
ment of the subject appeared, the favorite study of 
the artist being a nude figure reclining in a genteel 
attitude on a bank of pleasant greensward, and 
bleeding from the elbows, wrists, hands, ankles, and 
feet. 

in 

In Naples everywhere one is surprised by the 
great number of English names which appear on 
business houses, but it was entirely bewildering to 



98 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

read a bill affixed to the gate of one of the villas 
on this road: "This Desirable Property for Sale." 
I should scarcely have cared to buy that desirable 
property, though the neighborhood seemed to be a 
favorite summer resort, and there were villas, as I 
said, nearly the whole way to Portici. Those which 
stood with their gardens toward the bay would 
have been tolerable, no doubt, if they could have 
kept their windows shut to the vile street before 
their doors, but the houses opposite could have had 
no escape from its stench and noisomeness. It was 
absolutely the filthiest street I have seen anywhere 
outside of New York, excepting only that little 
street which, in Herculaneum, leads from the the- 
atre to the House of Argo. 

This pleasant avenue has a stream of turbid water 
in its centre, bordered by begging children, and is 
either fouler or cleaner for the water, but I shall 
never know which. It is at a depth of some fifty or 
sixty feet below the elevation on which the present 
city of Portici is built, and is part of the excavation 
made long ago to reach the plain on which Hercula- 
neum stands, buried under its half-score of succes- 
sive layers of lava, and ashes, and Portici. We had 
the aid of all the poverty and leisure of the modern 
town — there was a vast deal of both, we found — 
in our search for the staircase by which you descend 
to the classic plain, and it proved a discovery involv- 
ing the outlay of all the copper coin about us, while 
the sight of the famous theatre of Herculaneum 
was much more expensive than it would have been 



AT HERCULANEUM 99 

had we come there in the old time to see a play of 
Plautus or Terence. 

As for the theatre, " the large and highly orna- 
mented theatre" of which I read, only a little while 
ago, in an encyclopaedia, we found it, by the light 
of our candles, a series of gloomy hollows, of the 
general effect of coalbins and potato cellars. It 
was never perfectly dug out of the lava, and, as is 
known, it was filled up in the last century, together 
with other excavations, when they endangered the 
foundations of worthless Portici overhead. (I am 
amused to find myself so hot upon the poor pro- 
perty-holders of Portici. I suppose I should not my- 
self, even for the cause of antiquity and the know- 
ledge of classic civilization, like to have my house 
tumbled about my ears.) But though it was im- 
possible in the theatre of Herculaneum to gain any 
idea of its size or richness, I remembered there the 
magnificent bronzes which had been found in it, and 
paid a hasty reverence to the place. Indeed, it is 
amazing, when one sees how small a part of Hercu- 
laneum has been uncovered, to consider the number 
of fine works of art in the Museo Nazionale which 
were taken thence, and which argue a much richer 
and more refined community than that of Pompeii. 
A third of the latter city has now been restored to 
the light of day ; but though it has yielded abun- 
dance of all the things that illustrate the domestic 
and public life, and the luxury and depravity of those 
old times, and has given the once secret rooms of 
the museum their worst attraction, it still falls far 



ioo ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

below Herculaneum in the value of its contributions 
to the treasures of classic art, except only in the 
variety and beauty of its exquisite frescoes. 

The effect of this fact is to stimulate the imagina- 
tion of the visitor to that degree that nothing short 
of the instant destruction of Portici and the exca- 
vation of all Herculaneum will satisfy him. If the 
opening of one theatre, and the uncovering of a 
basilica and two or three houses, have given such 
riches to us, what delight and knowledge would not 
the removal of these obdurate hills of ashes and lava 
bestow ! 

Emerging from the coalbins and potato cellars, 
the visitor extinguishes his candle with a pathetic 
sigh, profusely rewards the custodian (whom he con- 
nects in some mysterious way with the ancient popu- 
lation of the injured city about him), and, thought- 
fully removing the tallow from his fingers, follows 
the course of the vile stream already sung, and soon 
arrives at the gate opening into the exhumed quarter 
of Herculaneum. And there he finds a custodian 
who enters perfectly into his feelings ; a custodian 
who has once been a guide in Pompeii, but now de- 
spises that wretched town, and would not be guide 
there for any money since he has known the supe- 
rior life of Herculaneum ; who, in fine, feels toward 
Pompeii as a Bostonian feels toward New York. Yet 
the reader would be wrong to form the idea that 
there is bitterness in the disdain of this custodian. 
On the contrary, he is one of the best-natured men 
in the world. He is a mighty mass of pinguid 



AT HERCULANEUM 101 

bronze, with a fat lisp, and a sunflower smile, and 
he lectures us with a vast and genial breadth of 
manner on the ruins, contradicting all our guesses at 

things with a sweet "Perdoni, signori! ma ." 

At the end, we find that he has some medallions of 
lava to sell : there is Victor Emanuel, or, if we are 
of thepartito (Tazione, there is Garibaldi ; both warm 
yet from the crater of Vesuvius, and of the same 
material which destroyed Herculaneum. We de- 
cline to buy, and the custodian makes the national 
shrug and grimace (signifying that we are masters 
of the situation, and that he washes his hands of the 
consequence of our folly) on the largest scale that 
we have ever seen : his mighty hands are rigidly 
thrust forth, his great lip protruded, his enormous 
head thrown back to bring his face on a level with 
his chin. The effect is tremendous, but we never- 
theless feel that he loves us the same. 

IV 

The afternoon on which we visited Herculaneum 
was in melancholy contrast to the day we spent in 
Pompeii. The lingering summer had at last sad- 
dened into something like autumnal gloom, and that 
blue, blue sky of Naples was overcast. So, this sec- 
ond draught of the spirit of the past had not only 
something of the insipidity of custom, but brought 
rather a depression than a lightness to our hearts. 
There was so little of Herculaneum : only a few 
hundred yards square are exhumed, and we counted 
the houses easily on the fingers of one hand, leaving 



102 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

the thumb to stand for the few rods of street that; 
with its flagging of lava and narrow border of foot 
walks, lay between ; and though the custodian, ap- 
parently moved at our dejection, said that the 
excavation was to be resumed the very next week, 
the assurance did little to restore our cheerfulness. 
Indeed, I fancy that these old cities must needs be 
seen in the sunshine by those who would feel what 
gay lives they once led ; by dimmer light they are 
very sullen spectres, and their doom still seems to 
brood upon them. I know that even Pompeii could 
not have been joyous that sunless afternoon, for 
what there was to see of mournful Herculaneum was 
as brilliant with colors as anything in the former 
city. Nay, I believe that the tints of the frescoes 
and painted columns were even brighter, and that 
the walls of the houses were far less ruinous than 
those of Pompeii. But no house was wholly freed 
from lava, and the little street ran at the rear of the 
buildings which were supposed to front on some 
grander avenue not yet exhumed. It led down, as 
the custodian pretended, to a wharf, and he showed 
an iron ring in the wall of the House of Argo, stand- 
ing at the end of the street, to which, he said, his 
former fellow-citizens used to fasten their boats, 
though it was all dry enough there now. 

There is evidence in Herculaneum of much more 
ambitious domestic architecture than seems to have 
been known in Pompeii. The ground plan of the 
houses in the two cities is alike ; but in the former 
there was often a second story, as was proven by the 



AT HERCULANEUM 103 

charred ends of beams still protruding from the 
walls, while in the latter there is only one house 
which is thought to have aspired to a second floor. 
The House of Argo is also much larger than any in 
Pompeii, and its appointments were more magnifi- 
cent. Indeed, we imagined that in this more purely 
Greek town we felt an atmosphere of better taste in 
everything than prevailed in the fashionable Ro- 
man watering-place, though this, too, was a summer 
resort of the " best society " of the empire. The 
mosaic pavements were exquisite, and the little bed- 
chambers dainty and delicious in their decorations. 
The lavish delight in color found expression in the 
vividest hues upon the walls, and not only were the 
columns of the garden painted, but the foliage 
of the capitals was variously tinted. The garden of 
the House of Argo was vaster than any of the 
classic world which we had yet seen, and was su- 
perb with a long colonnade of unbroken columns. 
Between these and the walls of the houses was a 
pretty pathway of mosaic, and in the midst once 
stood marble tables, under which the workmen ex- 
huming the city found certain crouching skeletons. 
At one end was the dining-room, of course, and 
painted on the wall was a lady with a parasol. 

I thought all Herculaneum sad enough, but the 
profusion of flowers growing wild in this garden 
gave it yet more tender and pathetic charm. Here 
— where so long ago the flowers had bloomed, and 
perished in the terrible blossoming of the mountain 
that sent up its fires iji the awful similitude of Na« 



104 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

ture's harmless and lovely forms, and showered its 
destroying petals all abroad — was it not tragic to 
find again the soft tints, the graceful shapes, the 
sweet perfumes of the earth's immortal life ? Of 
them that planted and tended and plucked and bore 
in their bosoms and twined in their hair these fragile 
children of the summer, what witness in the world? 
Only the crouching skeletons under the tables. 
Alas and alas ! 

v 

The skeletons went with us throughout Hercula- 
neum, and descended into the cell, all green with 
damp, under the basilica, and lay down, fettered and 
manacled in the place of those found there beside 
the big bronze kettle in which the prisoners used to 
cook their dinners. How ghastly the thought of it 
was ! If we had really seen this kettle and the 
skeletons there — as we did not — we could not have 
suffered more than we did. They took all the life 
out of the House of Perseus, and the beauty from 
his pretty little domestic temple to the Penates, and 
this was all there was left in Herculaneum to see. 

" Is there nothing else ? " we demand of the 
custodian. 

" Signori, this is all." 

"It is mighty little." 

" Perdoni, signore ! ma ." 

11 Well," we said sourly to each other, glancing 
round at the walls of the pit, on the bottom of 
which the bit of city stands, " it is a good thing to 
know that Herculaneum amounts to nothing." 




X. CAPRI AND CAPRIOTES 



WE delayed some days in Naples in hopes of 
fine weather, and at last chose a morning 
that was warm and cloudy at nine o'clock, and 
burst into frequent passions of rain before we 
reached Sorrento at noon. The first half of the 
journey was made by rail, and brought us to Castel- 
lamare, whence we took carriage for Sorrento, and 
oranges, and rapture, — winding along the steep 
shore of the sea, and under the brows of wooded 
hills that rose high above us into the misty weather, 
and caught here and there the sunshine on their 
tops. In that heavenly climate no day can long be 
out of humor, and at Sorrento we found ours very 



106 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

pleasant, and rode delightedly through the devious 
streets, looking up to the terraced orange-groves 
on one hand, and down to the terraced orange- 
groves on the other, until at a certain turning of the 
way we encountered Antonino Occhio d' Argento, 
whom fate had appointed to be our boatman to 
Capri. We had never heard of Antonino before, 
and indeed had intended to take a boat from one of 
the hotels ; but when this corsair offered us his 
services, there was that guile in his handsome face, 
that cunning in his dark eyes, which heart could not 
resist, and we halted our carriage and took him at 
once. 

He kept his boat in one of those caverns which 
honeycomb the cliff under Sorrento, and afford a 
natural and admirable shelter for such small craft 
as may be dragged up out of reach of the waves, 
and here I bargained with him before finally agree- 
ing to go with him to Capri. In Italy it is custo- 
mary for a public carrier when engaged to give his 
employer as a pledge the sum agreed upon for the 
service, which is returned with the amount due him, 
at the end, if the service has been satisfactory ; and 
I demanded of Antonino this caparra> as it is called. 
" What caparra ? M said he, lifting the lid of his 
wicked eye with his forefinger, "this is the best 
caparra" meaning a face as honest and trustworthy 
as the devil's. The stroke confirmed my subjection 
to Antonino, and I took his boat without further 
parley, declining even to feel the muscles of his 
boatmen's arms, which he exposed to my touch in 



CAPRI AND CAPRIOTES 107 

evidence that they were strong enough to row us 
swiftly to Capri. The men were only two in num- 
ber, but they tossed the boat lightly into the surf, 
and then lifted me aboard, and rowed to the little 
pier from which the ladies and T. got in. 

The sun shone, the water danced and sparkled, 
and presently we raised our sail, and took the gale 
that blew for Capri — an oblong height rising ten 
miles beyond out of the heart of the azure gulf. 
On the way thither there was little interest but that 
of natural beauty in the bold, picturesque coast we 
skirted for some distance ; though on one mighty 
rock there were the ruins of a seaward-looking Tem- 
ple of Hercules, with arches of the unmistakable 
Roman masonry, below which the receding waves 
rushed and poured over a jetting ledge in a thunder- 
ous cataract. 

Antonino did his best to entertain us, and lec- 
tured us unceasingly upon virtue and his wisdom, 
dwelling greatly on the propriety and good policy 
of always speaking the truth. This spectacle of 
veracity became intolerable after a while, and I was 
goaded to say : " Oh then, if you never tell lies, you 
expect to go to Paradise/' " Not at all," answered 
Antonino compassionately, "for I have sinned 
much. But the lie does n't go ahead " (iion va 
avanti), added this Machiavelli of boatmen ; yet I 
think he was mistaken, for he deceived us with per- 
fect ease and admirable success. All along he had 
pretended that we could see Capri, visit the Blue 
Grotto, and return that day ; but as we drew near 



108 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

the island, painful doubts began to trouble him, and 
he feared the sea would be too rough for the Grotto 
part of the affair. " But there will be an old man," 
he said, with a subtile air of prophecy, " waiting for 
us on the beach. This old man is one of the gov- 
ernment guides to the Grotto, and he will say 
whether it is to be seen to-day." 

And certainly there was the old man on the beach 
— a short patriarch, with his baldness covered by a 
kind of bloated woolen sock — a blear-eyed sage, and 
a barelegged. He waded through the surf toward 
the boat, and when we asked him whether the 
Grotto was to be seen, he paused knee-deep in the 
water (at a secret signal from Antonino, as I shall 
always believe), put on a face of tender solemnity, 
threw back his head a little, brought his hand to his 
cheek, expanded it, and said, " No ; to-day, no ! To- 
morrow, yes ! " Antonino leaped joyously ashore, 
and delivered us over to the old man, to be guided 
to the Hotel di Londra, while he threw his boat upon 
the land. He had reason to be contented, for this 
artifice of the patriarch of Capri relieved him from 
the necessity of verifying to me the existence of an 
officer of extraordinary powers in the nature of a 
consul, who, he said, would not permit boats to leave 
Capri for the mainland after five o'clock in the even- 
ing. 

When it was decided that we should remain on 
the island till the morrow, we found so much time 
on our hands, after bargaining for our lodging at 
the Hotel di Londra, that we resolved to ascend the 



CAPRI AND CAPRIOTES 109 

mountain to the ruins of the palaces of Tiberius, and 
to this end we contracted for the services of certain 
of the muletresses that had gathered about the inn- 
gate, clamorously offering their beasts. The mule- 
tresses chosen were a matron of mature years and 
of a portly habit of body ; her daughter, a mere 
child ; and her niece, a very pretty girl of eighteen, 
with a voice soft and sweet as a bird's. They placed 
the ladies, one on each mule, and then, while the 
mother and daughter devoted themselves to the 
hind-quarters of the foremost animal, the lovely niece 
brought up the rear of the second beast, and the 
patriarch went before, and T. and I trudged behind. 
So the cavalcade ascended ; first, from the terrace of 
the hotel overlooking the bit of shipping village on 
the beach, and next from the town of Capri, clinging 
to the hillsides, midway between sea and sky, until 
at last it reached the heights on which the ruins 
stand. Our way was through narrow lanes, bordered 
by garden walls ; then through narrow streets bor- 
dered by dirty houses ; and then again by gardens, 
but now of a better sort than the first, and belong- 
ing to handsome villas. 

On the road our pretty muletress gossiped cheer- 
fully, and our patriarch gloomily, and between the 
two we accumulated a store of information concern- 
ing the present inhabitants of Capri, which, I am 
sorry to say, has now for the most part failed me. 
I remember that they said most of the land-owners at 
Capri were Neapolitans, and that these villas were 
their country-houses ; though they pointed out one 



no ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

of the stateliest of the edifices as belonging to a 
certain English physician who had come to visit 
Capri for a few days, and had now been living on the 
island twenty years, having married (said the mule- 
tress) the prettiest and poorest girl in the town. 
From this romance — something like which the 
muletress seemed to think might well happen con- 
cerning herself — we passed lightly to speak of 
kindred things, the muletress responding gayly be- 
tween the blows she bestowed upon her beast. The 
accent of these Capriotes has something of German 
harshness and heaviness: they say non bosso instead 
of non possO) and monto instead of mondo } and inter- 
change the t and d a good deal ; and they use for 
father the Latin pater, instead of padre. But this 
girl's voice, as I said, was very musical, and the 
island's accent was sweet upon her tongue. 

I. — What is your name ? 

She. — Caterina, little sir {signorin). 

I. — And how old are you, Caterina ? 

She. — Eighteen, little sir. 

L — And you are betrothed ? 

She feigns not to understand ; but the patriarch, 
who has dropped behind to listen to our discourse, 
explains, — " He asks if you are in love." 

She. — Ah, no ! little sir, not yet. 

/ — No ? A little late, it seems to me. I think 
there must be some good-looking youngster w 7 ho 
pleases you — no ? 

She. — Ah, no ! one must work, one cannot think 
of marrying. We are four sisters, and we have only 



: 



CAPRI AND CAPRIOTES in 

the btionamano from hiring these mules, and we 
must spin and cook. 

The Patriarch, — Don't believe her ; she has two 
lovers. 

She. — Ah, no ! It is n't true. He tells a fib — he ! 

But, nevertheless, she seemed to love to be accused 
of lovers, — such is the guile of the female heart in 
Capri, — and laughed over the patriarch's wicked- 
ness. She confided that she ate maccaroni once a 
day, and she talked constantly of eating it just as the 
Northern Italians always talk of polenta. She was 
a true daughter of the isle, and had left it but once 
in her life, when she went to Naples. " Naples was 
beautiful, yes ; but one always loves one's own coun- 
try the best/' She was very attentive and good, 
but at the end was rapacious of more and more 
buonamano. " Have patience with her, sir/' said 
the blameless Antonino, who witnessed her greedi- 
ness ; " they do not understand certain matters here, 
poor little things ! " 

As for the patriarch, he was full of learning rela- 
tive to himself and to Capri ; and told me with much 
elaboration that the islanders lived chiefly by fishing, 
and gained something also by their vineyards. But 
they were greatly oppressed by taxes and the strict 
enforcement of the conscriptions, and they had little 
love for the Italian government, and wished the 
Bourbons back again. The Piedmontese, indeed, 
misgoverned them horribly. There was the Blue 
Grotto, for example : formerly travelers paid the 
guides five, six, ten francs for viewing it ; but now 



U2 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

the Piedmontese had made a tariff, and the poor 
guides could only exact a franc from each person. 
Things were in a ruinous condition. 

By this we had arrived at a little inn on the top 
of the mountain, very near the ruins of the palaces. 
" Here," said the patriarch, "it is customary for 
strangers to drink a bottle of the wine of Tiberius." 
We obediently entered the hostelry, and the land- 
lord — a white-toothed, brown-faced, good-humored 
peasant — gallantly ran forward and presented the 
ladies with bouquets of roses. We thought it a 
pretty and graceful act, but found later that it was 
to be paid for, like all pretty and graceful things in 
Italy ; for when we came to settle for the wine, and 
the landlord wanted more than justice, he urged that 
he had presented the ladies with flowers, — yet he 
equally gave me his benediction when I refused to 
pay for his politeness. 

"Now here," again said the patriarch in a solemn 
whisper, " you can see the Tarantella danced for two 
francs ; whereas down at your inn, if you hire the 
dancers through your landlord, it will cost you five 
or six francs." The difference was tempting, and 
decided us in favor of an immediate Tarantella. 
The muletresses left their beasts to browse about the 
door of the inn and came into the little public room, 
where were already the wife and sister of the land- 
lord, and took their places vis-a-vis, while the land- 
lord seized his tambourine and beat from it a wild 
and lively measure. The women were barefooted 
and hoopless, and they gave us the Tarantella with 



CAPRI AND CAPRIOTES 113 

all the beauty of natural movement and free floating 
drapery, and with all that splendid grace of pose 
which animates the antique statues and pictures of 
dancers. They swayed themselves in time with the 
music ; then, filled with its passionate impulse, ad- 
vanced and retreated and whirled away ; — snapping 
their fingers above their heads, and looking over 
their shoulders with a gay and a laughing challenge 
to each other, they drifted through the ever-repeated 
figures of flight and wooing, and wove for us pictures 
of delight that remained upon the brain like the ef- 
fect of long-pondered vivid colors, and still return to 
illumine and complete any representation of that 
indescribable dance. Heaven knows what peril there 
might have been in the beauty and grace of the 
pretty muletress but for the spectacle of her fat 
aunt, who burlesqued some of her niece's airiest 
movements, and whose hard-bought buoyancy was 
pathetic. She earned her share of the spoils cer- 
tainly, and she seemed glad when the dance was 
over, and went contentedly back to her mule. 

The patriarch had early retired from the scene as 
from a vanity with which he was too familiar for en- 
joyment, and I found him, when the Tarantella was 
done, leaning on the curb of the precipitous rock 
immediately behind the inn, over which the Capriotes 
say Tiberius used to cast the victims of his pleasures 
after he was sated with them. These have taken 
their place in the insular imagination as Christian 
martyrs, though it is probable that the poor souls 
were anything but Nazarenes. It took a stone 



114 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

thrown from the brink of the rock twenty seconds to 
send back a response from the water below, and the 
depth was too dizzying to look into. So we looked 
instead toward Amalfi, across the Gulf of Salerno, 
and toward Naples, across her bay. On every hand 
the sea was flushed with sunset, and an unspeakable 
calm dwelt upon it, while the heights rising from it 
softened and softened in the distance, and withdrew 
themselves into dreams of ghostly solitude and phan- 
tom city. The Emperor Tiberius is well known to 
have been a man of sentiment, and he may often 
have sought this spot to enjoy the evening hour. 
It was convenient to his palace, and he could here 
give a fillip to his jaded sensibilities by popping a 
boon companion over the cliff, and thus enjoy the 
fine poetic contrast which his perturbed and horrible 
spirit afforded to that scene of innocence and peace. 

The poor patriarch was also a rascal in his small 
way, and he presently turned to me with a counte- 
nance full of cowardly trouble and base remorse. 
" I pray you, little sir, not to tell the landlord below 
there that you have seen the Tarantella danced 
here ; for he has daughters and friends to dance it 
for strangers, and gets a deal of money by it. So, 
if he asks you to see it, do me the pleasure to say, 
lest he should take on (piglzarsi) with me about it : 
'Thanks, but we saw the Tarantella at Pompeii ! ' " 

The patriarch had a curious spice of malice in 
him, which prompted him to speak evil of all, and to 
as many as he dared. After we had inspected the 
ruins of the emperor's villa, a clownish imbecile of a 






CAPRI AND CAPRIOTES 115 

woman, professing to be the wife of the peasant 
who had made the excavations, came forth out of a 
cleft in the rock and received tribute of us — why, I 
do not know. The patriarch abetted the extortion, 
but Parthianly remarked, as we turned away, " Her 
husband ought to be here ; but this is a festa and 
he is drinking and gaming in the village," while the 
woman protested that he was sick at home. There 
was also a hermit living in great publicity among the 
ruins, and the patriarch did not spare him a sneering 
comment. 1 He had even a bad word for Tiberius, 
and reproached the emperor for throwing people 
over the cliff. The only human creatures with 
whom he seemed to be in sympathy were the bri- 
gands of the mainland, of whom he spoke poetically 
as exiles and fugitives. 

As for the palace of Tiberius, which we had come 
so far and so toilsomely to see, it must be confessed 
there was very little left of it. When he died, the 
Senate demolished his pleasure-houses at Capri, and 
left only those fragments of the beautiful brick ma- 
sonry which yet remain, clinging indestructible to 
the rocks, and strewing the ground with rubbish. 
The recent excavations have discovered nothing be- 
sides the uninteresting foundations of the building, 
except a subterranean avenue leading from one part 
of the palace to another ; this is walled with delicate 

1 This hermit I have heard was not brought up to the profession 
of anchorite, but was formerly a shoemaker, and according to his 
own confession abandoned his trade because he could better in* 
dulge a lethargic habit in the character of religious recluse. 



n6 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

brickwork, and exquisitely paved with white marble 
mosaic ; and this was all that witnessed of the splen- 
dor of the wicked emperor. Nature, the all-forget- 
ting, all-forgiving, that takes the red battlefield into 
her arms and hides it with blossom and harvest, 
could not remember his iniquity, greater than the 
multitudinous murder of war. The sea, which the 
despot's lust and fear had made so lonely, slept with 
the white sails of boats secure upon its breast ; the 
little bays and inlets, the rocky clefts and woody 
dells had forgotten their desecration ; and the gath- 
ering twilight, the sweetness of the garden-bordered 
pathway, and the serenity of the lonely landscape, 
helped us to doubt history. 

We slowly returned to the inn by the road we had 
ascended, noting again the mansion of the surprising 
Englishman who had come to Capri for three months 
and had remained thirty years ; passed through the 
darkness of the village, — dropped here and there 
with the vivid red of a lamp, — and so reached the 
inn at last, where we found the landlord ready to 
have the Tarantella danced for us. We framed a dis- 
creeter fiction than that prepared for us by the pa- 
triarch, and went in to dinner, where there were two 
Danish gentlemen in dispute with as many rogues of 
boatmen, who, having contracted to take them back 
that night to Naples, were now trying to fly their 
bargain and remain at Capri till the morrow. The 
Danes beat them, however, and then sat down to 
dinner, and to long stories of the imposture and vil- 
lainy of the Italians. One of them chiefly bewailed 



I 



CAPRI AND CAPRIOTES 117 

himself that the day before, having unwisely eaten a 
dozen oysters without agreeing first with the oyster- 
men upon the price, he had been obliged to pay this 
scamp's extortionate demand to the full, since he was 
unable to restore him his property. We thought 
that something like this might have happened to an 
imprudent man in any country, but we did not the 
less join him in abusing the Italians — the purpose 
for which foreigners chiefly visit Italy. 

11 

Standing on the height among the ruins of Ti- 
berius' s palace, the patriarch had looked out over 
the waters, and predicted for the morrow the finest 
weather that had ever been known in that region ; 
but in spite of this prophecy the day dawned storm- 
ily, and at breakfast time we looked out doubtfully 
on waves lashed by driving rain. The entrance to 
the Blue Grotto, to visit which we had come to 
Capri, is by a semicircular opening, some three feet 
in width and two feet in height, and just large 
enough to admit a small boat. One lies flat in the 
bottom of this, waits for the impulse of a beneficent 
wave, and is carried through the mouth of the cav- 
ern, and rescued from it in like manner by some 
receding billow. When the wind is in the wrong 
quarter, it is impossible to enter the grot at all ; and 
we waited till nine o'clock for the storm to abate 
before we ventured forth. In the mean time one 
of the Danish gentlemen, who — after assisting his 
companion to compel the boatmen to justice the 



u8 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

night before — had stayed at Capri, and had risen 
early to see the grotto, returned from it, and we be- 
sieged him with a hundred questions concerning it. 
But he preserved the wise silence of the boy who 
goes in to see the six-legged calf, and comes out im- 
pervious to the curiosity of all the boys who are 
doubtful whether the monster is worth their money. 
Our Dane would merely say that it was now possi- 
ble to visit the Blue Grotto ; that he had seen it ; 
that he was glad he had seen it . As to its blue- 
ness, Messieurs — yes, it is blue. Cest a dire. . . . 
The ladies had been amusing themselves with a 
perusal of the hotel register, and the notes of ad- 
miration or disgust with which the different so- 
journers at the inn had filled it. As a rule, the 
English people found fault with the poor little hos- 
telry and the French people praised it. Commander 
Joshing and Lieutenant Prattent, R. N., of the for- 
mer nation, " were cheated by the donkey women, 
and thought themselves extremely fortunate to have 
escaped with their lives from the effects of Capri 
vintage. The landlord was an old Cossack.'* On 
the other hand, we read, "J, Cruttard, homme de 
let t res, a pass& quinze jours ici, et n'a eu que des 
felicites du patron de cet hotel et de sa famille." 
Cheerful man of letters ! His good-natured record 
will keep green a name little known to literature. 
Who are G. Bradshaw, Duke of New York, and Si- 
gnori Jones and Andrews, Hereditary Princes of the 
United States ? Their patrician names followed 
the titles of several English nobles in the register. 



CAPRI AND CAPRIOTES 119 

But that which most interested the ladies in this 
record was the warning of a terrified British matron 
against any visit to the Blue Grotto except in the 
very calmest weather. The British matron penned 
her caution after an all but fatal experience. The 
ladies read it aloud to us, and announced that for 
themselves they would be contented with pictures 
of the Blue Grotto and our account of its marvels. 

On the beach below the hotel lay the small boats 
of the guides to the Blue Grotto, and we descended 
to take one of them. The fixed rate is a franc for 
each person. The boatmen wanted five francs for 
each of us. We explained that although not in- 
digenous to Capri, or even Italy, we were not of 
the succulent growth of travelers, and would not 
be eaten. We retired to our vantage-ground on the 
heights. The guides called us to the beach again. 
They would take us for three francs apiece, or say 
six francs for both of us. We withdrew furious to 
the heights again, where we found honest Antonino, 
who did us the pleasure to yell to his fellow-scoun- 
drels on the beach, " You had better take these 
signori for a just price. They are going to the syn- 
dic to complain of you." At which there arose a 
lamentable outcry among the boatmen, and they 
called with one voice for us to come down and go 
for a franc apiece. 

We had scarcely left the landing of the hotel in 
the boat of the patriarch — for I need hardly say he 
was first and most rapacious of the plundering crew 
— when we found ourselves in very turbulent waters, 



120 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

in the face of mighty bluffs, rising inaccessible from 
the sea. Here and there, where their swarthy fronts 
were softened with a little verdure, goat-paths wound 
up and down among the rocks ; and midway between 
the hotel and the grotto, in a sort of sheltered nook, 
we saw the Roman masonry of certain antique baths 
— baths of Augustus, says Valery; baths of Tibe- 
rius, say the Capriotes, zealous for the honor of their 
infamous hero. Howbeit, this was all we saw on the 
way to the Blue Grotto. Every moment the waves 
rose higher, emulous of the bluffs, which would not 
have afforded a foothold, or anything to cling to, had 
we been upset and washed against them — and we 
began to talk of the immortality of the soul. As we 
neared the grotto, the patriarch entertained us with 
stories of the perilous adventures of people who 
insisted upon entering it in stormy weather, — es- 
pecially of a French painter who had been impris- 
oned in it four days, and kept alive only on rum, 
which the patriarch supplied him, swimming into the 
grotto with a bottleful at a time. " And behold us 
arrived, gentlemen ! " said he, as he brought the boat 
skillfully around in front of the small semicircular 
opening at the base of the lofty bluff. We lie flat on 
the bottom of the boat, and complete the immersion 
of that part of our clothing which the driving tor- 
rents of rain had spared. The wave of destiny rises 
with us upon its breast — sinks, and we are inside of 
the Blue Grotto. Not so much blue as gray, how- 
ever, and the water about the mouth of it green 
rather than azure. They say that on a sunny day 



CAPRI AND CAPRIOTES 121 

Doth the water and the roof of the cavern are of 
the vividest cerulean tint — and I saw the grotto so 
represented in the windows of the paint-shops at 
Naples. But to my own experience it did not differ 
from other caves in color or form : there was the 
customary clamminess in the air ; the sound of drop- 
ping water ; the sense of dull and stupid solitude, — 
a little relieved in this case by the mighty music of 
the waves breaking against the rocks outside. The 
grot is not great in extent, and the roof in the rear 
shelves gradually down to the water. Valery says 
that some remains of a gallery have caused the sup- 
position that the grotto was once the scene of Tibe- 
rius's pleasures ; and the Prussian painter who dis- 
covered the cave was led to seek it by something 
he had read of a staircase by which Barbarossa used 
to descend into a subterranean retreat from the town 
of Anacapri on the mountain-top. The slight frag- 
ment of ruin which we saw in one corner of the cave 
might be taken in confirmation of both theories; 
but the patriarch attributed the work to Barbarossa, 
being probably tired at last of hearing Tiberius so 
much talked about. 

We returned, soaked and disappointed, to the ho- 
tel, where we found Antonino very doubtful about 
the possibility of getting back that day to Sorrento, 
and disposed, when pooh-poohed out of the notion of 
bad weather, to revive the fiction of a prohibitory 
consul. He was staying in Capri at our expense, 
and the honest fellow would willingly have spent a 
fortnight there. 



122 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

We summoned the landlord to settlement, and he 
came with all his household to present the account, 
— each one full of visible longing, yet restrained 
from asking buonamano by a strong sense of previ- 
ous contract. It was a deadly struggle with them, 
but they conquered themselves, and blessed us as we 
departed. The pretty muletress took leave of us 
on the beach, and we set sail for Sorrento, the ladies 
crouching in the bottom of the boat, and taking their 
seasickness in silence. As we drew near the beau- 
tiful town, we saw how it lay on a plateau, at the 
foot of the mountains, but high above the sea. An- 
tonino pointed out to us the house of Tasso, — in 
which the novelist Cooper also resided when in Sor- 
rento, — a white house not handsomer nor uglier 
than the rest, with a terrace looking out over the 
water. The bluffs are pierced by numerous arched 
caverns, as I have said, giving shelter to the fisher- 
men's boats, and here and there a devious stairway 
mounts to their crests. Up one of these we walked, 
noting how in the house above us the people, with 
that puerility usually mixed with the Italian love of 
beauty, had placed painted busts of terra-cotta in the 
windows to simulate persons looking out. There 
was nothing to blame in the breakfast we found 
ready at the Hotel Rispoli ; or in the grove of slen- 
der, graceful orange-trees in the midst of which the 
hotel stood, and which had lavished the fruit in 
every direction on the ground. 

Antonino attended us to our carriage when we 
went away. He had kept us all night at Capri, it is 



CAPRI AND CAPRIOTES 123 

true, and he had brought us in at the end for a 
prodigious buonamano ; yet I cannot escape the con- 
viction that he parted from us with an unfulfilled 
purpose of greater plunder, and I have a compas- 
sion, which I here declare, for the strangers who fell 
next into his hands. He was good enough at the 
last moment to say that his name, Silver-Eye, was 
a nickname given him according to a custom of the 
Sorrentines ; and he made us a farewell bow that 
could not be bought in America for money. 

At the station of Castellamare sat a curious cripple 
on the stones, — a man with little, short, withered 
legs, and a pleasant face. He showed us the ticket- 
office, and wanted nothing for the politeness. After 
we had been in the waiting-room a brief time, he 
came swinging himself in upon his hands, followed 
by another person, who, when the cripple had 
planted himself finally and squarely on the ground, 
whipped out a tape from his pocket and took his 
measure for a suit of clothes, the cripple twirling 
and twisting himself about in every way for the 
tailor's convenience. Nobody was surprised or 
amused at the sight, and when his measure was thus 
publicly taken, the cripple gravely swung himself 
out as he had swung himself in. 














XL BETWEEN ROME AND NAPLES 

ONE day it became plain even to our reluc- 
tance that we could not stay in Naples for- 
ever, and the next morning we took the train for 
Rome. The Villa Reale put on its most alluring 
charm to him that ran down before breakfast to 
thrid once more its pathways bordered with palms 
and fountains and statues ; the bay beside it purpled 
and twinkled in the light that made silver of the 
fishermen's sails ; far away rose Vesuvius with his 
nightcap of mist still hanging about his shoulders ; 
all around rang and rattled Naples. The city was 
never so fair before, nor could ever have been so 
hard to leave ; and at the last moment the landlord 
of the Hotel Washington must needs add a supreme 
pang by developing into a poet, and presenting me 
with a copy of a comedy he had written. 






BETWEEN ROME AND NAPLES 125 

Nobody who cares to travel with decency and 
comfort can take the second-class cars on the road 
between Naples and Rome, though these are per- 
fectly good everywhere else in Italy. The Papal 
city makes her influence felt for shabbiness and un- 
cleanliness wherever she can, and her management 
seems to prevail on this railway. A glance into the 
second-class cars reconciled us to the first class, — 
which in themselves were bad, — and we took our 
places almost contentedly. 

The road passed through the wildest country we 
had seen in Italy ; and presently a rain began to 
fall and made it drearier than ever. The land was 
much grown up with thickets of hazel, and was here 
and there sparsely wooded with oaks. Under these, 
hogs were feeding upon the acorns, and the wet 
swineherds were steaming over fires built at their 
roots. In some places the forest was quite dense ; 
in other places it fell entirely away, and left the 
rocky hillsides bare, and solitary but for the sheep 
that nibbled at the scanty grass, and the shepherds 
that leaned upon their crooks and motionlessly 
stared at us as we rushed by. As we drew near 
Rome, the scenery grew lonelier yet ; the land rose 
into desolate, sterile, stony heights, without a patch 
of verdure on their nakedness, and at last abruptly 
dropped into the gloomy expanse of the Campagna. 

The towns along the route had little to interest 
us in their looks, though at San Germano we caught 
a glimpse of the famous old convent of Monte-Cas- 
sino, perched aloft on its cliff and looking like a part 



126 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

of the rock on which it was built. Fancy now loves 
to climb that steep acclivity, and wander through 
the many-volumed library of the ancient Benedic- 
tine retreat, and on the whole finds it less fatiguing 
and certainly less expensive than actual ascent and 
acquaintance with the monastery would have been. 
Two Croatian priests, who shared our compartment 
of the railway carriage, first drew our notice to the 
place, and were enthusiastic about it for many miles 
after it was out of sight. What gentle and pleasant 
men they were, and how hard it seemed that they 
should be priests and Croats! They told us all 
about the city of Spalato, where they lived, and gave 
us such a glowing account of Dalmatian poets and 
poetry that we began to doubt at last if the seat of 
literature were not somewhere on the east coast of 
the Adriatic ; and I hope we left them the impres- 
sion that the literary centre of the world was not a 
thousand miles from the horse-car office in Harvard 
Square. 

Here and there repairs were going forward on 
the railroad, and most of the laborers were women. 
They were straight and handsome girls, and moved 
with a stately grace under the baskets of earth bal- 
anced on their heads. Brave black eyes they had, 
such as love to look and to be looked at ; they were 
not in the least hurried by their work, but desisted 
from it to gaze at the passengers whenever the train 
stopped. They all wore their beautiful peasant 
costume, — the square white linen headdress fall- 
ing to the shoulders, the crimson bodice, and the 



BETWEEN ROME AND NAPLES 127 

red scant skirt ; and how they contrived to keep 
themselves so clean at their work, and to look so 
spectacular in it all, remains one of the many Italian 
mysteries. 

Another of these mysteries we beheld in the little 
beggar-boy at Isoletta. He stood at the corner of 
the station quite mute and motionless during our 
pause, and made no sign of supplication or entreaty. 
He let his looks beg for him. He was perfectly 
beautiful and exceedingly picturesque. Where his 
body was not quite naked, his jacket and trousers 
hung in shreds and points ; his long hair grew 
through the top of his hat, and fell over like a 
plume. Nobody could resist him ; people ran out 
of the cars, at the risk of being left behind, to put 
coppers into the little dirty hand held languidly out 
to receive them. The boy thanked none, smiled on 
none, but looked curiously and cautiously at all, 
with the quick perception and the illogical conclu- 
sions of his class and race. As we started he did not 
move, but remained in his attitude of listless tran- 
quillity. As we glanced back, the mystery of him 
seemed to be solved for a moment : he would stand 
there till he grew up into a graceful, prayerful, piti- 
less brigand, and then he would rend from travel 
the tribute now so freely given him. But after all, 
though his future seemed clear, and he appeared the 
type of a strange and hardly reclaimable people, he 
was not quite a solution of the Neapolitan puzzle. 




XII. ROMAN PEARLS 



THE first view of the ruins in the Forum brought 
a keen sense of disappointment. I knew that 
they could only be mere fragments and rubbish, but 
I was not prepared to find them so. I learned that 
I had all along secretly hoped for some dignity of 
neighborhood, some affectionate solicitude on the 
part of Nature to redeem these works of Art from 
the destruction that had befallen them. But in 
hollows below the level of the dirty cowfield, wan- 
dered over by evil-eyed buffaloes, and obscenely 
defiled by wild beasts of men, there stood here an 
arch, there a pillar, yonder a cluster of columns 
crowned by a bit of frieze ; and yonder again, a frag- 
ment of temple, half-gorged by the fagade of a hid- 
eous rococo church ; then a height of vaulted brick- 
work, and, leading on to the Coliseum, another arch, 



ROMAN PEARLS 129 

and then incoherent columns overthrown and mixed 
with dilapidated walls — mere phonographic con- 
sonants, dumbly representing the past, out of which 
all vocal glory had departed. The Coliseum itself 
does not much better express a certain phase of 
Roman life than the Arena at Verona ; it is larger 
only to the foot-rule, and it seemed not grander 
otherwise, while it is vastly more ruinous. Even the 
Pantheon failed to impress me at first sight, though 
I found myself disposed to return to it again and 
again, and to be more and more affected by it. 

Modern Rome appeared, first and last, hideous. 
It is the least interesting town in Italy, and the 
architecture is hopelessly ugly — especially the ar- 
chitecture of the churches. The Papal city contrives 
at the beginning to hide the Imperial city from your 
thought, as it hides it in such a great degree from 
your eye, and old Rome only occurs to you in a sort 
of stupid wonder over the depth at which it is buried. 
I confess that I was glad to get altogether away 
from it after a first look at the ruins in the Forum, 
and to take refuge in the Conservatorio delle Mendi- 
canti, where we were charged to see the little Vir- 
ginia G. The Conservatorio, though a charitable in- 
stitution, is not so entirely meant for mendicants as 
its name would imply, but none of the many young 
girls there were the children of rich men. They 
were often enough of parentage actually hungry 
and ragged, but they were often also the daughters 
of honest poor folk, who paid a certain sum toward 
their maintenance and education in the Conserva- 



130 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

torio. Such was the case with little Virginia, whose 
father was at Florence, doubly impeded from seeing 
her by the fact that he had fought against the Pope 
for the Republic of 1 848, and by the other fact that 
he had since wrought the Pope a yet deadlier injury 
by turning Protestant. 

Ringing a garrulous bell that continued to jingle 
some time after we were admitted, we found our- 
selves in a sort of reception-room, of the temperature 
of a cellar, and in the presence of a portress who 
was perceptibly preserved from mould only by the 
great pot of coals that stood in the centre of the 
place. Some young girls, rather pretty than not, 
attended the ancient woman, and kindly acted as 
the ear-trumpet through which our wishes were 
conveyed to her mind. The Conservatorio was not, 
so far, as conventual as we had imagined it ; but as 
the gentleman of the party was strongly guarded 
by female friends, and asked at once to see the Su- 
perior, he concluded that there was, perhaps, some- 
thing so unusually reassuring to the recluses in his 
appearance and manner that they had not thought 
it necessary to behave very rigidly. It later occurred 
to this gentleman that the promptness with which 
the pretty mendicants procured him an interview 
with the Superior had a flavor of self-interest in it, 
and that he who came to the Conservatorio in the 
place of a father might have been for a moment 
ignorantly viewed as a yet dearer and tenderer pos- 
sibility. From whatever danger there was in this 
error the Superior soon appeared to rescue him, and 



ROMAN PEARLS 131 

we were invited into a more ceremonious apartment 
on the first floor, and the little Virginia was sent 
for. The visit of the strangers caused a tumult 
and interest in the quiet old Conservatorio of which 
it is hard to conceive now, and the excitement grew 
tremendous when it appeared that the signori were 
Americani and Protestanti. We imparted a savor 
of novelty and importance to Virginia herself, and 
when she appeared, the Superior and her assistant 
looked at her with no small curiosity and awe, of 
which the little maiden instantly became conscious, 
and began to take advantage. Accompanying us 
over the building and through the grounds, she cut 
her small friends wherever she met them, and was 
not more than respectful to the assistant. 

It was from an instinct of hospitality that we were 
shown the Conservatorio, and instructed in regard 
to all its purposes. We saw the neat dormitories 
with their battalions of little white beds ; the kitchen 
with its gigantic coppers for boiling broth, and the 
refectory with the smell of the frugal dinners of 
generations of mendicants in it. The assistant was 
very proud of the neatness of everything, and was 
glad to talk of that, or, indeed, anything else. It 
appeared that the girls were taught reading, writing, 
and plain sewing when they were young, and that 
the Conservatorio was chiefly sustained by pious 
contributions and bequests. Any lingering notion 
of the conventual character of the place was dispelled 
by the assistant's hurrying to say, " And when we 
can get the poor things well married, we are glad 
to do so." 



132 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

" But how does any one ever see them ? " 

" Eh ! well, that is easily managed. Once a 
month we dress the marriageable girls in their best, 
and take them for a walk in the street. If an hon- 
est young man falls in love with one of them going 
by, he comes to the Superior, and describes her as 
well as he can, and demands to see her. She is 
called, and if both are pleased, the marriage is ar- 
ranged. You see it is a very simple affair.' ' 

And there was, to the assistant's mind, nothing 
odd in the whole business, insomuch that I felt 
almost ashamed of marveling at it. 

Issuing from the back door of the convent, we as- 
cended by stairs and gateways into garden spaces, 
chiefly planted with turnips and other vegetables, 
and curiously adorned with fragments of antique 
statuary, and here and there a fountain in a corner, 
trickling from moss-grown rocks, and falling into a 
trough of travertine, about the feet of some poor 
old goddess or Virtue who had forgotten what her 
name was. 

Once, the assistant said, speaking as if the thing 
had been within her recollection, though it must 
have been centuries before, the antiquities of the 
Conservatorio were much more numerous and strik- 
ing ; but they were now removed to the different 
museums. Nevertheless they had still a beautiful 
prospect left, which we were welcome to enjoy if we 
would follow her ; and presently, to our surprise, 
we stepped from the garden upon the roof of the 
Temple of Peace. The assistant had not boasted 



ROMAN PEARLS 133 

without reason : away before us stretched the Cam- 
pagna, a level waste, and empty, but for the arched 
lengths of the aqueducts that seemed to stalk 
down from the ages across the melancholy expanse 
like files of giants, with now and then a ruinous gap 
in the line, as if one had fallen out weary by the 
way. The city all around us glittered asleep in the 
dim December sunshine, and far below us — on 
the length of the Forum over which the Appian 
Way stretched from the Capitoline Hill under the 
Arch of Septimius Severus and the Arch of Titus 
to the Arch of Constantine, leaving the Coliseum 
on the left, and losing itself in the foliage of the 
suburbs- — the Past seemed struggling to emerge 
from the ruins, and to shape and animate itself 
anew. The effort was more successful than that 
which we had helped the Past to make when 
standing on the level of the Forum ; but Antiquity 
must have been painfully conscious of the incongru- 
ity of the red-legged Zouaves wandering over the 
grass, and of the bewildered tourists trying to make 
her out with their Murrays. 

In a day or two after this we returned again to 
our Conservatorio, where we found that the excite- 
ment created by our first visit had been kept fully 
alive by the events attending the photographing of 
Virginia for her father. Not only Virginia was there 
to receive us, but her grandmother also — an old, 
old woman, dumb through some infirmity of age, 
who could only w r eep and smile in token of her con- 
tent. I think she had but a dim idea, after all, of 



134 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

what went on beyond the visible fact of Virginia's 
photograph, and that she did not quite understand 
how we could cause it to be taken for her son. She 
was deeply compassionated by the Superior, who 
rendered her pity with a great deal of gesticulation, 
casting up her eyes, shrugging her shoulders, and 
sighing grievously. But the assistant's cheerfulness 
could not be abated even by the spectacle of extreme 
age ; and she made the most of the whole occasion, 
recounting with great minuteness all the incidents 
of the visit to the photographer's, and running to 
get the dress Virginia sat in, that we might see how 
exactly it was given in the picture. Then she gave 
us much discourse concerning the Conservatorio 
and its usages, and seemed not to wish us to think 
that life there was altogether eventless. " Here we 
have a little amusement also," she said. " The girls 
have their relatives to visit them sometimes, and 
then in the evening they dance. Oh, they enjoy 
themselves ! I am half old {mezzo vecchid). I am 
done with these things. But for youth, always kept 
down, something lively is wanted." 

When we took leave of these simple folks, we 
took leave of almost the only natural and unprepared 
aspect of Italian life which we were to see in Rome ; 
but we did not know this at the time. 

ii 

Indeed, it seems to me that all moisture of ro- 
mance and adventure has been well-nigh sucked out 
of travel in Italy, and that compared with the old 



ROMAN PEARLS 135 

time, when the happy wayfarer journeyed by vettura 
through the innumerable little states of the Penin- 
sula, — halted every other mile to show his pass- 
port, and robbed by customs officers in every color 
of shabby uniform and every variety of cocked hat, 
— the present railroad period is one of but stale 
and insipid flavor. Much of local life and color re- 
mains, of course ; but the hurried traveler sees little 
of it, and, passed from one grand hotel to another, 
without material change in the cooking or the 
methods of extortion, he might nearly as well re- 
main at Paris. The Italians, who live to so great 
extent by the travel through their country learn 
our abominable languages and minister to our de- 
testable comfort and propriety, till we have slight 
chance to know them as we once could, — musical, 
picturesque, and full of sweet, natural knaveries and 
graceful falsehood. Rome really belongs to the 
Anglo-Saxon nations, and the Pope and the Past 
seem to be carried on entirely for our diversion. 
Everything is systematized as thoroughly as in a 
museum where the objects are all ticketed; and 
our prejudices are consulted even down to almsgiv- 
ing. Honest Beppo is gone from the steps in the 
Piazza di Spagna, and now the beggars are labeled 
like policemen, with an immense plate bearing the 
image of St. Peter, so that you may know you give 
to a worthy person when you bestow charity on 
one of them, and not, alas ! to some abandoned im- 
postor, as in former days. One of these highly 
recommended mendicants gave the last finish to 



136 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

the system, and begged of us in English ! No 
custodian will answer you, if he can help it, in the 
Italian which he speaks so exquisitely, preferring 
to speak bad French instead, and in all the shops 
on the Corso the English tongue is de rigneur. 

After our dear friends at the Conservatorio, I 
think we found one of the most simple and interest- 
ing of Romans in the monk who showed us the 
Catacombs of St. Sebastian. These catacombs, 
he assured us, were not restored like those of St. 
Calixtus, but were just as the martyrs left them ; 
and, as I do not remember to have read anywhere 
that they are formed merely of long, low, narrow, 
wandering underground passages, lined on either 
side with tombs in tiers like berths on a steamer, 
and expanding here and there into small square 
chambers, bearing the traces of ancient frescoes, 
and evidently used as chapels, — I venture to offer 
the information here. The reader is to keep in his 
mind a darkness broken by the light of wax tapers, 
a close smell, and crookedness and narrowness, or 
he cannot realize the catacombs as they are in fact. 
Our monkish guide, before entering the passage 
leading from the floor of the church to the tombs, 
in which there was still some "fine small dust " of 
the martyrs, warned us that to touch it was to incur 
the penalty of excommunication, and then gently 
craved pardon for having mentioned the fact. But, 
indeed, it was only to persons who showed a cer- 
tain degree of reverence that these places were 
now exhibited ; for some Protestants who had been 



1 



ROMAN PEARLS 137 

permitted there had stolen handfuls of the precious 
ashes, merely to throw away. I assured him that 
I thought them beasts to do it ; and I was after- 
wards puzzled to know what should attract their 
wantonness in the remnants of mortality, hardly to 
be distinguished from the common earth out of 
which the catacombs were dug. 

in 

Returning to the church above we found, kneel- 
ing before one of the altars, two pilgrims, — a man 
and a woman. The latter was habited in a nun- 
like dress of black, and the former in a long pil- 
grim's coat of coarse blue stuff. He bore a pilgrim's 
staff in his hand, and showed under his close hood 
a fine, handsome, reverent face, full of a sort of 
tender awe, touched with the pathos of penitence. 
In attendance upon the two was a dapper little 
silk-hatted man, with rogue so plainly written in his 
devotional countenance that I was not surprised to 
be told that he was a species of spiritual valet de 
place, whose occupation it was to attend pilgrims 
on their tour to the Seven Churches at which these 
devotees pray in Rome, and there to direct their 
orisons and join in them. 

It was not to the pilgrims, but to the heretics 
that the monk now uncovered the precious marble 
slab on which Christ stood when he met Peter fly- 
ing from Rome and turned him back. You are 
shown the prints of the divine feet, which the con- 
scious stone received and keeps forever ; and near 



138 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

at hand is one of the arrows with which St. Sebas- 
tian was shot. We looked at these things critically, 
having to pay for the spectacle ; but the pilgrims 
and their guide were all faith and wonder. 

I remember seeing nothing else so finely super- 
stitious at Rome. In a chapel near the Church of 
St. John Lateran are, as is well known, the marble 
steps which once belonged to Pilate's house, and 
which the Saviour is said to have ascended when 
he went to trial before Pilate. The steps are pro- 
tected against the wear and tear of devotion by a 
stout casing of wood, and they are constantly cov- 
ered with penitents, who ascend and descend them 
upon their knees. Most of the pious people whom 
I saw in this act were children, and the boys en- 
joyed it with a good deal of giggling, as a very amus- 
ing feat. Some old and haggard women gave the 
scene all the dignity which it possessed ; but certain 
well-dressed ladies and gentlemen were undeniably 
awkward and absurd, and I was led to doubt if 
there were not an incompatibility between the aban- 
don of simple faith and the care of good clothes. 

IV 

In all other parts of Italy one hears constant 
talk among travelers of the malaria at Rome. But 
in Rome itself the malaria is laughed at by the for- 
eign residents, — who, nevertheless, go out of the 
city in midsummer. The Romans, to the number 
of a hundred thousand or so, remain there the whole 
year round, and I am bound to say I never saw a 






ROMAN PEARLS 139 

healthier, robuster-looking population. The cheeks 
of the French soldiers, too, whom we met at every 
turn, were red as their trousers, and they seemed to 
flourish on the imputed unwholesomeness of the at- 
mosphere. All at Rome are united in declaring that 
the fever exists at Naples, and that sometimes those 
who have taken it there come and die in Rome, in 
order to give the city a bad name ; and I think this 
very likely. 

Rome is certainly dirty, however, though there is 
a fountain in every square, and you are never out 
of the sound of falling water. The Corso and some 
of the principal streets do not so much impress you 
with their filth as with their dullness ; but that part 
of the city where some of the most memorable relics 
of antiquity are to be found is unimaginably vile. 
The least said of the state of the archways of the 
Coliseum the soonest mended ; and I have already 
spoken of the Forum. The streets near the Theatre 
of Pompey are almost impassable, and the so-called 
House of Rienzi is a stable, fortified against ap- 
proach by di fosse oi excrement. A noisome smell 
seems to be esteemed the most appropriate offering 
to the memory of ancient Rome, and I am not sure 
that the moderns are mistaken in this. In the ras- 
cal streets in the neighborhood of the most august 

! ruins, the people turn round to stare at the stranger 
as he passes them ; they are all dirty, and his de- 
cency must be no less a surprise to them than the 

I neatness of the French soldiers amid all the filth is 
a puzzle to him. We wandered about a long time 



140 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

in such places one day, looking for the Tarpeian 
Rock, less for Tarpeia's sake than for the sake of 
Hawthorne's Miriam and Donatello and the Model. 
There are two Tarpeian rocks, between which the 
stranger takes his choice ; and we must have chosen 
the wrong one, for it seemed but a shallow gulf 
compared to that in our fancy. We were somewhat 
disappointed ; but then, Niagara disappoints one ; 
and as for Mont Blanc. . . . 



It is worth while for every one who goes to Rome 
to visit the Church of St. Peter's ; but it is scarcely 
worth while for me to describe it, or for every one 
to go up into the bronze globe on the top of the 
cupola. In fact, this is a great labor, and there is 
nothing to be seen from the crevices in the ball 
which cannot be far more comfortably seen from 
the roof of the church below. 

The companions of our ascent to the latter point 
were an English lady and gentleman, brother and 
sister, and both Catholics, as they at once told us. 
The lady and myself spoke for some time in the 
Tuscan tongue before we discovered that neither of 
us was Italian, after which we paid each other some 
handsome compliments upon our fluency and per- 
fection of accent. The gentleman was a pleasant 
purple porpoise from the waters of Chili, whither 
he had wandered from the English coasts in early 
youth. He had two leading ideas : one concerned 
the Pope, to whom he had just been presented, and 






ROMAN PEARLS 141 

whom he viewed as the best and blandest of beings ; 
the other related to his boy, then in England, whom 
he called Jack Spratt, and considered the grandest 
and greatest of boys. With the view from the roof 
of the church this gentleman did not much trouble 
himself. He believed Jack Spratt could ride up to 
the roof where we stood on his donkey. As to the 
great bronze globe which we were hurrying to enter, 
he seemed to regard it merely as a rival in rotundity, 
and made not the slightest motion to follow us. 

I should be loath to vex the reader with any de- 
scription of the scene before us and beneath us, even 
if I could faithfully portray it. But I recollect, with 
a pleasure not to be left unrecorded, the sweetness 
of the great fountain playing in the square before 
the church, and the harmony in which the city grew 
in every direction from it, like an emanation from 
its music, till the last house sank away into the 
pathetic solitude of the Campagna, with nothing 
beyond but the snow-capped mountains lighting 
up the remotest distance. At the same moment I 
experienced a rapture in reflecting that I had un- 
derpaid three hackmen during my stay in Rome, 
and thus contributed to avenge my race for ages of 
oppression. 

The vastness of St. Peter's itself is best felt in 
looking down upon the interior from the gallery that 
surrounds the inside of the dome, and in comparing 
one's own littleness with the greatness of all the 
neighboring mosaics. But as to the beauty of the 
temple, I could not find it without or within. 



142 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

VI 

In Rome one's fellow-tonrists are a constant 
source of gratification and surprise. I thought that 
American travelers were by no means the most ab- 
surd among those we saw, nor even the loudest in 
their approval of the Eternal City. A certain order 
of German greenness affords, perhaps, the pleasant- 
est pasturage for the ruminating mind. For example, 
at the Villa Ludovisi there was, beside numerous 
Englishry in detached bodies, a troop of Germans, 
chiefly young men, frugally pursuing the Sehens- 
wiirdigkeiten in the social manner of their nation. 
They took their enjoyment very noisily, and wran- 
gled together with furious amiability as they looked 
at Guercino's " Aurora." Then two of them parted 
from the rest, and went to a little summer-house in 
the gardens, while the others followed us to the top 
of the Casino. There they caught sight of their 
friends in the arbor, and the spectacle appeared to 
overwhelm them. They bowed, they took off their 
hats, they waved their handkerchiefs. It was not 
enough : one young fellow mounted on the balus- 
trade of the roof at his neck's risk, lifted his hat on 
his cane, and flourished it in greeting to theheart's- 
friends in the arbor, from whom he had parted two 
minutes before. 

In strange contrast to the producer of this enthu- 
siasm, so pumped and so unmistakably mixed with 
beer, a fat and pallid Englishwoman sat in a chair 
upon the roof and coldly, coldly sketched the lovely 



ROMAN PEARLS 143 

landscape. And she and the blonde young English 
girl beside her pronounced a little dialogue together, 
which I give, because I saw that they meant it for 
the public : 

The Young Girl. — I wonder, you knoa, you don't 
draw-ow St. Petuh's ! 

The Artist. — O ah, you knoa, I can draw-ow St. 
Petuh's from so mennee powints. 

I am afraid that the worst form of American 
greenness appears abroad in a desire to be perfectly 
up in critical appreciation of the arts, and to ap- 
proach the great works in the spirit of the connois- 
seur. The ambition is not altogether a bad one. 
A fellow-countryman told me that he had not yet 
seen Raphael's "Transfiguration," because he 
wished to prepare his mind for understanding the 
original by first looking at all the copies he could 
find. 

VII 

The Basilica San Paolo fuori le Mura surpasses 
everything in splendor of marble and costly stone 
— porphyry, malachite, alabaster — and luxury of 
gilding that is to be seen at Rome. But I chiefly 
remember it because on the road that leads to it, 
through scenes as quiet and peaceful as if history 
had never known them, lies the Protestant grave- 
yard in which Keats is buried. Quite by chance 
the driver mentioned it, pointing in the direction 
of the cemetery with his whip. We eagerly dis- 
mounted and repaired to the gate, where we were 
met by the son of the sexton, who spoke English 



i 4 4 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

through the beauteous line of a curved Hebrew nose. 
Perhaps a Christian could not be found in Rome to 
take charge of these heretic graves, though Chris- 
tians can be got to do almost anything there for 
money. However, I do not think a Catholic would 
have kept the place in better order, or more intelli- 
gently received our reverent curiosity. It was the 
new burial-ground which we had entered, and which 
is a little to the right of the elder cemetery. It was 
very beautiful and tasteful in every way ; the names 
upon the stones were chiefly English and Scotch, 
with here and there an American's. But affection 
drew us only to the prostrate tablet inscribed with 
the words, " Percy Bysshe Shelley, Cor Cordium," 
and then we were ready to go to the grave of him 
for whom we all feel so deep a tenderness. The 
grave of John Keats is one of few in the old burying- 
ground, and lies almost in the shadow of the pyra- 
mid of Caius Cestius ; and I could not help thinking 
of the wonder the Roman would have felt could 
he have known into what unnamable richness and 
beauty his Greek faith had ripened in the heart of 
the poor poet, where it was mixed with so much 
pain. Doubtless, in his time, a prominent citizen 
like Caius Cestius was a leading member of the 
temple in his neighborhood, and regularly attended 
sacrifice: it would have been but decent; and yet 
I fancied that a man immersed like him in affairs 
might have learned with surprise the inner and 
more fragrant meaning of the symbols with the 
outside of which his life was satisfied ; and I was 



ROMAN PEARLS 145 

glad to reflect that in our day a like thing is im- 
possible. 

The grave of our beloved poet is sunken to the 
level of the common earth, and is only marked by the 
quaintly lettered, simple stone bearing the famous 
epitaph. While at Rome I heard talk of another 
and grander monument which some members of the 
Keats family were to place over the dust of their 
great kinsman. But, for one, I hope this may never 
be done, even though the original stone should also 
be left there, as was intended. Let the world still 
keep unchanged this shrine, to which it can repair 
with at once pity and tenderness and respect. 

A rose-tree and some sweet-smelling bushes grew 
upon the grave, and the roses were in bloom. We 
asked leave to take one of them ; but at last could 
only bring ourselves to gather some of the fallen 
petals. Our Hebrew guide was willing enough, and 
unconsciously set us a little example of wantonness ; 
for while he listened to our explanation of the mys- 
tery which had puzzled him ever since he had learned 
English, namely, why the stone should say " writ on 
water/* and not written, he kept plucking mechan- 
ically at one of the fragrant shrubs, pinching away 
the leaves, and rending the tender twig, till, re- 
membering the once-sensitive dust from which it 
grew, one waited for the tortured tree to cry out to 
him with a voice of words and blood, " Perch& mi 
schianti ? " 



J46 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

VIII 

One Sunday afternoon we went with some artis« 
tic friends to visit the studio of the great German 
painter, Overbeck ; and since I first read Uhland I 
have known no pleasure so illogical as I felt in look- 
ing at this painter's drawings. In the sensuous 
heart of objective Italy he treats the themes of 
mediaeval Catholicism with the most subjective feel- 
ing, and I thought I perceived in his work the 
enthusiasm which led many Protestant German 
painters and poets of the romantic school back into 
the twilight of the Romish faith, in the hope that 
they might thus realize to themselves something of 
the earnestness which animated the elder Christian 
artists. 

Walking from the painter's house, two of us 
parted with the rest on the steps of the Church 
of Santa Maria Maggiore, and pursued our stroll 
through the gate of San Lorenzo out upon the 
Campagna, which tempts and tempts the sojourner 
at Rome, until at last he must go and see — if it 
will give him the fever. And, alas ! there I caught 
the Roman fever — the longing that burns one who 
has once been in Rome to go again — that will not 
be cured by all the cool contemptuous things he 
may think or say of the Eternal City ; that fills him 
with fond memories of its fascination, and makes it 
forever desired. 

We walked far down the dusty road beyond the 
city walls, and then struck out from the highway 



ROMAN PEARLS 147 

across the wild meadows of the Campagna. They 
were weedy and desolate, seamed by shaggy grass- 
grown ditches, and deeply pitted with holes made in 
search for catacombs. There was here and there a 
farmhouse amid the wide lonesomeness, but oftener 
a round, hollow, roofless tomb, from which the dust 
and memory of the dead had long been blown away, 
and through the top of which — fringed and over- 
hung with grasses, and opening like a great eye — 
the evening sky looked mysteriously sad. One of 
the fields was full of grim, wide-horned cattle, and 
in another there were four or five buffaloes lying 
down and chewing their cuds, — holding their heads 
horizontally in the air, and with an air of gloomy 
wickedness which nothing could exceed in their 
cruel black eyes, glancing about in visible pursuit 
of some object to toss and gore. There were also 
many canebrakes, in which the wind made a mourn- 
ful rustling after the sun had set in golden glitter 
on the roofs of the Roman churches and the trans- 
parent night had fallen upon the scene. 

In all our ramble we met not a soul, and I 
scarcely know what it is makes this walk upon the 
Campagna one of my vividest recollections of Rome, 
unless it be the opportunity it gave me to weary 
myself upon that many-memoried ground as freely 
as if it had been a woods-pasture in Ohio. Nature, 
where history was so august, was perfectly simple 
and motherly, and did so much to make me at 
home, that, as the night thickened and we plunged 
here and there into ditches and climbed fences, and 



148 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

struggled, heavy-footed, back through the suburbs 
to the city gate, I felt as if half my boyhood had 
been passed upon the Campagna. 

IX 

Pasquino, like most other great people, is not 
very interesting upon close approach. There is no 
trace now in his aspect to show that he has ever 
been satirical; but the humanity that the sculptor 
gave him is imperishable, though he has lost all 
character as a public censor. The torso is at first 
glance merely a shapeless mass of stone, but the 
life can never die out of that which has been shaped 
by art to the likeness of a man, and a second look 
restores the lump to full possession of form and 
expression. For this reason I lament that statues 
should ever be restored except by sympathy and 
imagination. 



When the Tiber, according to its frequent habit, 
rises and inundates the city, the Pantheon is one of 
the first places to be flooded — the sacristan told 
us. The water climbs above the altar-tops, sapping, 
in its recession, the cement of the fine marbles 
which incrust the columns, so that about their bases 
the pieces have to be continually renewed. No- 
thing vexes you so much in the Pantheon as your 
consciousness of these and other repairs. Bad as 
ruin is, I think I would rather have the old temple 
ruinous in every part than restored as you find it 






ROMAN PEARLS 149 

f he sacristan felt the wrongs of the place keenly, 
and said, referring to the removal of the bronze 
roof, which took place some centuries ago, "They 
have robbed us of everything " (Ci hanno levato 
tuttd) ; as if he and the Pantheon were of one 
blood, and he had suffered personal hurt in its 
spoliation. 

What a sense of the wildness everywhere lurking 
about Rome we had given us by that group of pea- 
sants who had built a fire of brushwood almost 
within the portico of the Pantheon, and were cook- 
ing their supper at it, the light of the flames luridly 
painting their swarthy faces ! 

XI 

Poor little Numero Cinque Via del Gambero has 
seldom, I imagine, known so violent a sensation as 
that it experienced when, on the day of the Immac- 
ulate Conception, the Armenian Archbishop rolled 
up to the door in his red coach. The master of the 
house had always seemed to like us ; now he ap- 
peared with profound respect suffusing, as it were, 
his whole being, and announced, " Signore, it is 
Monsignore come to take you to the Sistine Chapel 
in his carriage," and drew himself up in a line, as 
much like a series of serving-men as possible, to let 
us pass out. There was a private carriage for the 
ladies near that of Monsignore, for he had already 
advertised us that the sex were not permitted to 
ride in the red coach. As they appeared, however, 
he renewed his expressions of desolation at being 



ISO ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

deprived of their company, and assured them of his 
good-will with a multiplicity of smiles and nods, in- 
termixed with shrugs of recurrence to his poignant 
regret. But ! In fine, it was forbidden ! 

Monsignore was in full costume, with his best 
ecclesiastical clothes on, and with his great gold 
chain about his neck. The dress was richer than 
that of the western archbishops ; and the long white 
beard of Monsignore made him look much more 
like a Scriptural monsignore than these. He lacked, 
perhaps, the fine spiritual grace of his brother, the 
Archbishop of Venice, to whose letter of introduc- 
tion we owed his acquaintance and untiring civili- 
ties ; but if a man cannot be plump and spiritual, 
he can be plump and pleasant, as Monsignore was 
to the last degree. He enlivened our ride with dis- 
course about the Armenians at Venice, equally be- 
loved of us ; and, arrived at the Sistine Chapel, he 
marshaled the ladies before him, and won them early 
entrance through the crowd of English and Ameri- 
cans crushing one another at the door. Then he 
laid hold upon the captain of the Swiss Guard, who 
was swift to provide them with the best places ; 
and in no wise did he seem one of the uninfluential 
and insignificant priests that About describes the 
archbishops at Rome to be. According to this 
lively author, a Swiss guard was striking back the 
crowd on some occasion with the butt of his hal~ 
berd, and smote a cardinal on the breast. He in- 
stantly dropped upon his knees with, " Pardon, Emi- 
nenza! I thought it was a monsignore ! " Even 






ROMAN PEARLS 151 

the chief of these handsome fellows had nothing 
but respect and obedience for our Archbishop. 

The gentlemen present were separated from the 
ladies, and in a very narrow space outside of the 
chapel men of every nation were penned up to« 
gether. All talked — several priests as loudly as 
the rest. But the rudest among them were certain 
Germans, who not only talked but stood upon a seat 
to see better, and were ordered down by one of the 
Swiss with a fierce " Giu y signori, giu ! " Other- 
wise the guard kept good order in the chapel, and 
were no doubt as useful and genuine as anything 
about the poor old Pope. What gorgeous fellows 
they were, and, as soldiers, how absurd ! The wea- 
pons they bore were as obsolete as the Inquisition. 
It was amusing to pass one of these play-soldiers on 
guard at the door of the Vatican — tall, straight, 
beautiful, superb, with his halberd on his shoulder 
— and then come to a real warrior outside, a little, 
ugly, red-legged French sentinel, with his Minie on 
his arm. 

Except for the singing of the Pope's choir, — 
which was angelically sweet, and heavenly far above 
all praise, — the religious ceremonies affected me as 
tedious and empty. Each of the cardinals, as he 
entered the chapel, blew a sonorous nose ; and was 
received standing by his brother prelates — a gro- 
tesque company of old-womanish old men in gaudy 
gowns. From where I stood I saw the Pope's face 
only in profile : it was gentle and benign enough, but 
not great in expression, and the smile on it almost 



152 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

degenerated into a simper. His Holiness had a 
cold ; and his recitative, though full, was not smooth. 
He was all prete when, in the midst of the service, 
he hawked, held his handkerchief up before his 
face, a little way off, and ruthlessly spat in it ! 



FORZA MAGGIORE 






^tBHti^^^^^S^^^ Mill 




FORZA MAGGIORE 

I IMAGINE that Grossetto is not a town much 
known to travel, for it is absent from all the 
guide-books I have looked at. However, it is chief 
in the Maremma, where sweet Pia de' Tolommei 
languished and perished of the poisonous air and 
her love's cruelty, and where, so many mute centu- 
ries since, the Etrurian cities flourished and fell. 
Further, one may say that Grossetto is on the dili- 
gence road from Civita Vecchia to Leghorn, and 
that in the very heart of the place there is a lovely 
palm-tree, rare, if not sole, in that latitude. This 
palm stands in a well-sheltered, dull little court, 
out of everything's way, and turns tenderly toward 
the wall that shields it on the north. It has no 
other company but a beautiful young girl, who 
leans out of a window high over its head, and I 



156 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

have no doubt talks with it. At the moment we 
discovered the friends, the maiden was looking 
pathetically to the northward, while the palm softly 
stirred and opened its plumes, as a bird does when 
his song is finished ; and there is very little ques- 
tion but it had just been singing to her that song of 
which the palms are so fond, — 

" Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam 
Im Norden auf kahler H6h\" 

Grossetto does her utmost to hide the secret of 
this tree's existence, as if a hard, matter-of-fact 
place ought to be ashamed of a sentimentality of 
the kind. It pretended to be a very worldly town, 
and tried to keep us in the neighborhood of its 
cathedral, where the caff e and shops are, and where, 
in the evening, four or five officers of the garrison 
clinked their sabres on the stones, and promenaded 
up and down, and as many ladies shopped for gloves ; 
and as many citizens sat at the principal caffe and 
drank black coffee. This was lively enough ; and 
we knew that the citizens were talking of the last 
week's news and the Roman question ; that the 
ladies were really looking for loves, not gloves ; that 
such of the officers as had no local intrigue to keep 
their hearts at rest were terribly bored, and longed 
for Florence or Milan or Turin. 

Besides the social charms of her piazza, Grossetto 
put forth others of an artistic nature. The cathe- 
dral was very old and very beautiful, — built of 
alternate lines of red and white marble, and lately 
restored in the best spirit. But it was not open, 






FORZA MAGGIORE 157 

and we were obliged to turn from it to the group of 
statuary in the middle of the piazza, representative 
of the Maremma and Family returning thanks to 
the Grand Duke Leopold III. of Tuscany for his 
goodness in causing her swamps to be drained. 
The Maremma and her children are arrayed in the 
scant draperies of Allegory, but the Grand Duke is 
fully dressed, and is shown looking down with some 
surprise at their figures, and with an apparent doubt 
of the propriety of their public appearance in that 
state. 

There was also a museum at Grossetto, and I 
wonder what was in it ? 

The wall of the town was perfect yet, though the 
moat at its feet had been so long dry that it was 
only to be known from the adjacent fields by the 
richness of its soil. The top of the wall had been 
leveled, and planted with shade, and turned into a 
peaceful promenade, like most of such mediaeval 
defenses in Italy ; though I am not sure that a little 
military life did not still linger about a bastion here 
and there. From somewhere, when we strolled out 
early in the morning, to walk upon the wall, there 
came to us a throb of drums ; but I believe that the 
only armed men we saw, beside the officers in the 
piazza, were the numerous sportsmen resorting at 
that season to Grossetto for the excellent shooting 
in the marshes. All the way to Florence we con- 
tinued to meet them and their dogs ; and our inn at 
Grosetto overflowed with abundance of game. On 
the kitchen floor and in the court were heaps of 



158 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

larks, pheasants, quails, and beccafichi, at which a 
troop of scullion-boys constantly plucked, and from 
which the great, noble, beautiful, white-aproned 
cook forever fried, stewed, broiled, and roasted. 
We lived chiefly upon these generous birds during 
our sojourn, and found, when we attempted to vary 
our bill of fare, that the very genteel waiter attend- 
ing us had few distinct ideas beyond them. He was 
part of the repairs and improvements which that 
hostelry had recently undergone, and had evidently 
coilie in with the four-pronged forks, the chromo- 
lithographs of Victor Emanuel, Garibaldi, Solferino, 
and Magenta in the large dining-room, and the iron 
stove in the small one. He had nothing, evidently, 
in common with the brick floors of the bed-cham- 
bers, and the ancient rooms with great fireplaces. 
He strove to give a Florentine polish to the rusti- 
city of life in the Maremma ; and we felt sure that 
he must know what beefsteak was. When we 
ordered it, he assumed to be perfectly conversant 
with it, started to bring it, paused, turned, and, with 
a great sacrifice of personal dignity, demanded, 
" Bifsteca di manzo, o bifsteca di mo tone ? " — 
" Beefsteak of beef, or beefsteak of mutton ? " 

Of Grossetto proper, this is all I remember, if I 
except a boy whom I heard singing after dark in 
the streets, — 

" Camicia rossa, camicia ardente!" 

The cause of our sojourn there was an instance of 
forza tnaggiore, as the agent of the diligence com- 



FORZA MAGGIORE 159 

pany defiantly expressed it, in refusing us damages 
for our overturn into the river. It was in the early 
part of the winter when we started from Rome for 
Venice, and we were traveling northward by dili- 
gence because the railways were still more or less 
interrupted by the storms and floods predicted of 
Matthieu de la Drome, — the only reliable prophet 
France has produced since Voltaire ; — and if our 
accident was caused by an overruling Providence, 
the company, according to the very law of its exist- 
ence, was not responsible. To be sure, we did not 
see how an overruling Providence was to blame for 
loading upon our diligence the baggage of two dili- 
gences, or for the clumsiness of our driver ; but, on 
the other hand, it is certain that the company did 
not make it rain or cause the inundation. And;dn 
fine, although we could not have traveled by rail- 
way, we were masters to have taken the steamer 
instead of the diligence at Civita Vecchia. 

The choice of either of these means of travel had 
presented itself in vivid hues of disadvantage all 
the way from Rome to the Papal port, where the 
French steamer for Leghorn lay dancing a horn- 
pipe upon the short, chopping waves, while we 
approached by railway. We had leisure enough to 
make the decision, if that was all we wanted. Our 
engine-driver had derived his ideas of progress from 
an Encyclical Letter, and the train gave every pro- 
mise of arriving at Civita Vecchia five hundred 
years behind time. But such was the desolating 
and depressing influence of the weather and the 



160 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

landscape, that we reached Civita Vecchia as unde- 
cided as we had left Rome. On the one hand, there 
had been the land, soaked and sodden, — wild, shag- 
ged with scrubby growths of timber, and brooded 
over by sullen clouds, and visibly inhabited only by 
shepherds, leaning upon their staves at an angle of 
forty-five degrees, and looking, in their immovable 
dejection, with their legs wrapped in long-haired 
goatskins, like satyrs that had been converted, and 
were trying to do right ; turning dim faces to us, they 
warned us with every mute appeal against the land, 
as a waste of mud from one end of Italy to the other. 
On the other hand, there was the sea-wind raving 
about our train and threatening to blow it over, and 
whenever we drew near the coast, heaping the waves 
upon the beach in thundering menace. 

We weakly and fearfully remembered our former 
journeys by diligence over broken railway routes ; 
we recalled our cruel voyage from Genoa to Naples 
by sea. Still, we might have lingered and hesitated, 
and perhaps returned to Rome at last, but for the 
dramatic resolution of the old man who solicited 
passengers for the diligence, and carried their pass- 
ports for a final papal visa at the police-office. By 
the account he gave of himself, he was one of the 
best men in the world, and unique in those parts for 
honesty ; and he besought us, out of that affection- 
ate interest with which our very aspect had inspired 
him, not to go by steamer, but to go by diligence, 
which in nineteen hours would land us safe, and 
absolutely refreshed by the journey, at the railway 



FORZA MAGGIORE 161 

station in Follonica. And now, once, would we go 
by diligence ? twice, would we go ? three times, 
would we go ? 

" Signore," said our benefactor angrily, " I lose 
my time with you ; " and ran away, to be called back 
in the course of destiny, as he knew well enough, 
and besought to take us as a special favor. 

From the passports he learned that there was offi- 
cial dignity among us, and addressed the unworthy 
bearer of public honors as Eccellenza, and at parting 
bequeathed his advantage to the conductor, com- 
mending us all in set terms to his courtesy. He 
hovered caressingly about us as long as we remained, 
straining politeness to do us some last little service ; 
and when the diligence rolled away, he did all that 
one man could to give us a round of applause. 

At the moment of departure, we were surprised 
to have enter the diligence a fellow-countryman, 
whom we had first seen on the road from Naples to 
Rome. He had since crossed our path with that 
iteration of travel which brings you again and again 
in view of the same trunks and the same tourists in 
the round of Europe, and finally at Civita Vecchia 
he had turned up, a silent spectator of our scene 
with the agent of the diligence, and had gone off 
apparently a confirmed passenger by steamer. Per- 
haps a nearer view of the sailor's hornpipe, as danced 
by that vessel in the harbor, shook his resolution. 
At any rate, here he was again, and with his ticket 
for Follonica, — a bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked man, 
and we will say a citizen of Portland, though he was 



1 62 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

not. For the first time in our long acquaintance 
with one another's faces, we entered into conversa- 
tion, and wondered whether we should find brigands 
or anything to eat on the road, without expectation of 
finding either. In respect of robbers, we were not 
disappointed ; but shortly after nightfall we stopped 
at a lonely post-house to change horses, and found 
that the landlord had so far counted on our appear- 
ance as to have, just roasted and fragrantly fuming, 
a leg of lamb, with certain small fried fish, and a 
sufficiency of bread. It was a very lonely place as 
I say ; the sky was gloomy overhead ; and the wild- 
ness of the landscape all about us gave our provi- 
sion quite a gamy flavor ; and brigands could have 
added nothing to our sense of solitude. 

The road creeps along the coast for some distance 
from Civita Vecchia, within hearing of the sea, and 
nowhere widely forsakes it, I believe, all the way to 
Follonica. The country is hilly, and we stopped 
every two hours to change horses ; at which times 
we looked out, and, seeing that it was a gray and 
windy night, though not rainy, exulted that we had 
not taken the steamer. With very little change, 
the wisdom of our decision in favor of the diligence 
formed the burden of our talk during the whole 
night ; and to think of eluded seasickness requited 
us in the agony of our break-neck efforts to catch a 
little sleep, as, mounted upon our nightmares, we 
rode steeple-chases up and down the highways 
and byways of horror. Anything that absolutely 
awakened us was accounted a blessing ; and I re- 



FORZA MAGGIORE 163 

member few things in life with so keen a pleasure as 
the summons that came to us to descend from our 
places and cross a river in one boat, while the two 
diligences of our train followed in another. Here 
we had time to see our fellow-passengers, as the pul- 
sating light of their cigars illumined their faces, and 
to discover among them that Italian, common to all 
large companies, who speaks English, and is very 
eager to practice it with you, — who is such a bene- 
factor if you do not know his own language, and 
such a bore if you do. After this, being landed, it 
was rapture to stroll up and down the good road, 
and feel it hard and real under our feet, and not an 
abysmal impalpability, while all the grim shapes of 
our dreams fled to the spectral line of small boats 
sustaining the ferry -barge, and swaying slowly from 
it as the drowned men at their keels tugged them 
against the tide. 

" S 9 accommodiho, Signori!" cries the cheerful 
voice of the conductor, and we ascend to our places 
in the diligence. The nightmares are brought out 
again ; we mount, and renew the steeple-chase as 
before. 

Suddenly it all comes to an end, and we sit wide 
awake in the diligence, amid a silence only broken 
by the hiss of rain against the windows, and the 
sweep of gusts upon the roof. The diligence stands 
still ; there is no rattle of harness, nor other sound 
to prove that we have arrived at the spot by other 
means than dropping from the clouds. The idea 
that we are passengers in the last diligence destroyed 



164 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

before the Deluge, and are now waiting our fate on 
the highest ground accessible to wheels, fades away 
as the day dimly breaks, and we find ourselves 
planted, as the Italians say, on the banks of another 
river. There is no longer any visible conductor, 
the horses have been spirited away, the driver has 
vanished. 

The rain beats and beats upon the roof, and begins 
to drop through upon us in great, wrathful teats, 
while the river before us rushes away with a mo- 
mently swelling flood. Enter now from the depths 
of the storm a number of rainy peasants, with our 
conductor and driver perfectly waterlogged, and 
group themselves on the low, muddy shore, near a 
flat ferry-barge, evidently wanting but a hint of 
forza maggiore to go down with anything put into 
it. A moment they dispute in pantomime, sending 
now and then a windy tone of protest and expos- 
tulation to our ears, and then they drop into a mo- 
tionless silence, and stand there in the tempest, 
not braving it, but enduring it with the pathetic 
resignation of their race, as if it were some form of 
hopeless political oppression. At last comes the 
conductor to us and says it is impossible for our 
diligences to cross in the boat, and he has sent for 
others to meet us on the opposite shore. He ex- 
pected them long before this, but we see ! They 
are not come. Patience and malediction ! 

Remaining planted in these unfriendly circum- 
stances from four o'clock till ten, we have still the 
effrontery to be glad that we did not take the steamer. 



FORZA MAGGIORE 165 

What a storm that must be at sea ! When at last 
our connecting diligences appear on the other shore, 
we are almost light-hearted, and make a jest of the 
Ombrone, as we perilously pass it in the ferry-boat 
too weak for our diligences. Between the landing 
and the vehicles there is a space of heavy mud to 
cross, and when we reach them we find the coupi 
appointed us occupied by three young Englishmen, 
who insist that they shall be driven to the boat. 
They keep the seats to which they have no longer 
any right, while the tempest drenches the ladies 
to whom the places belong ; and it is only by the 
forza maggiore of our conductor that they can be 
dislodged. In the mean time the Portland man ex- 
changes with them the assurances of personal and 
national esteem, which that mighty bond of friend- 
ship, the language of Shakespeare and Milton, en- 
ables us to offer so idiomatically to our transatlantic 
cousins. 

What Grossetto was like, as we first rode through 
it, we scarcely looked to see. In four or five hours 
we should strike the railroad at Follonica ; and we 
merely asked of intermediate places that they should 
not detain us. We dined in Grossetto at an inn of 
the Larthian period, — a cold inn and a damp, which 
seemed never to have been swept since the broom 
dropped from the grasp of the last Etrurian cham- 
bermaid, — and we ate with the two-pronged iron 
forks of an extinct civilization. All the while we 
dined, a boy tried to kindle a fire to warm us, and 
beguiled his incessant failures with stories of inunda- 



166 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

tion on the road ahead of us. But we believed him 
so little, that when he said a certain stream near 
Grossetto was impassable, our company all but hissed 
him. 

When we left the town and hurried into the open 
country, we perceived that he had only too great 
reason to be an alarmist. Every little rill was risen, 
and boiling over with the pride of harm, and the 
broad fields lay hid under the yellow waters that 
here and there washed over the road. Yet the 
freshet only presented itself to us as a pleasant ex- 
citement ; and even when we came to a place where 
the road itself was covered for a quarter of a mile, 
we scarcely looked outside the diligence to see how 
deep the water was. We were surprised when our 
horses were brought to a stand on a rising ground, 
and the conductor, cap in hand, appeared at the door. 
He was a fat, well-n.atured man, full of a smiling 
good-will ; and he stood before us in a radiant des- 
peration. 

Would Eccellenza descend, look at the water in 
front, and decide whether to go on ? The conductor 
desired to content ; it displeased him to delay, — ma 
in somma ! — the rest was confided to the con- 
ductor's eloquent shoulders and eyebrows. 

Eccellenza, descending, beheld a disheartening 
prospect. On every hand the country was under 
water. The two diligences stood on a stone bridge 
spanning the stream, that, now swollen to an angry 
torrent, brawled over a hundred yards of the road 
before us. Beyond, the ground rose, and on its 



FORZA MAGGIORE 167 

slope stood a farmhouse up to its second story in 
water. Without the slightest hope in his purpose, 
and merely as an experiment, Eccellenza suggested 
that a man should be sent in on horseback ; which 
being done, man and horse in a moment floundered 
into swimming depths. 

The conductor, vigilantly regarding Eccellenza, 
gave a great shrug of desolation. 

Eccellenza replied with a foreigner's shrug, — a 
shrug of sufficiently correct construction, but want- 
ing the tonic accent, as one may say, though ex- 
pressing, however imperfectly, an equal desolation. 

It appeared to be the part of wisdom not to go 
ahead, but to go back if we could ; and we reentered 
the water we had just crossed. It had risen a little, 
meanwhile, and the road could now be traced only 
by the telegraph poles. The diligence before us 
went safely through ; but our driver, trusting rather 
to inspiration than precedent, did not follow it care- 
fully, and directly drove us over the side of a small 
viaduct. All the baggage of the train having been 
lodged upon the roof of our diligence, the unwieldy 
vehicle now lurched heavily, hesitated, as if prepar- 
ing, like Caesar, to fall decently, and went over on its 
side with a stately deliberation that gave us ample 
time to arrange our plans for getting out. 

The torrent was only some three feet deep, but it 
*/as swift and muddy, and it was with a fine sense of 
shipwreck that Eccellenza felt his boots filling with 
water, while a conviction that it would have been 
better, after all, to have taken the steamer, struck 



168 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

coldly home to him. We opened the window in the 
top side of the diligence, and lifted the ladies through 
it, and the conductor, in the character of life-boat, 
bore them ashore ; while the driver cursed his horses 
in a sullen whisper, and could with difficulty be 
diverted from that employment to cut the lines 
and save one of them from drowning. 

Here our compatriot, whose conversation with 
the Englishman at the Ombrone we had lately ad- 
mired, showed traits of strict and severe method 
which afterward came into even bolder relief. The 
ladies being rescued, he applied himself to the res- 
cue of their hats, cloaks, rubbers, muffs, books, and 
bags, and handed them up through the window with 
tireless perseverance, making an effort to wring or 
dry each article in turn. The other gentleman on 
top received them all rather grimly, and had not 
perhaps, been amused by the situation but for the ex- 
ploit of his hat. It was of the sort called in Italian 
as in English slang a stove-pipe (canna), and having 
been made in Italy, it was of course too large for its 
wearer. It had never been anything but a horror 
and reproach to him, and he was now inexpressibly 
delighted to see it steal out of the diligence in com- 
pany with one of the red-leather cushions, and glide 
darkly down the flood. It nodded and nodded to 
the cushion with a superhuman tenderness and ele- 
gance, and had a preposterous air of whispering, as 
it drifted out of sight, — 

" It may be we shall reach the Happy Isles, — 
It may be that the gulfs shall wash us down." 






FORZA MAGGIORE 169 

The romantic interest of this episode had hardly 
died away, when our adventure acquired an idyllic 
flavor from the appearance on the scene of four 
peasants in an ox-cart. These the conductor tried 
to engage to bring out the baggage and right the 
fallen diligence ; and they, after making him a little 
speech upon the value of their health which might 
be injured, asked him, tentatively two hundred 
francs for the service. The simple incident en- 
forced the fact already known to us, — that if Ital- 
ians sometimes take advantage of strangers, they 
are equally willing to prey upon each other ; but I 
doubt if anything could have taught a foreigner 
the sweetness with which our conductor bore the 
enormity, and turned quietly from those brigands to 
carry the Portland man from the wreck, on which 
he lingered, to the shore. 

Here in the gathering twilight the passengers of 
both diligences grouped themselves, and made 
merry over the common disaster. As the conductor 
and the drivers brought off the luggage our spirits 
rose with the arrival of each trunk, and we were 
pleased or not as we found it soaked or dry. We 
applauded and admired the greater sufferers among 
us : a lady who opened a dripping box was felt to 
have perpetrated a pleasantry ; and a Brazilian gen- 
tleman, whose luggage dropped to pieces and was 
scattered in the flood about the diligence, was looked 
upon as a very subtile humorist. Our own contri- 
bution to these witty passages was the epigrammatic 
display of a reeking trunk full of the pretty rubbish 



170 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

people bring away from Rome and Naples, — copies 
of Pompeian frescoes more ruinous than the origi- 
nals ; photographs floating loose from their cards ; 
little earthen busts reduced to the lumpishness of 
common clay; Roman scarfs stained and blotted 
out of all memory of their recent hues ; Roman 
pearls clinging together in clammy masses. 

We were a band of brothers and sisters, as we all 
crowded into one diligence and returned to Gros- 
setto. Arrived there, our party, knowing that a 
public conveyance in Italy always stops at the worst 
inn in a place, made bold to seek another, and 
found it without ado, though the person who under- 
took to show it spoke of it mysteriously and as of 
difficult access, and tried to make the simple affair 
as like a scene of grand opera as he could. 

We took one of the ancient rooms in which there 
was a vast fireplace, as already mentioned, and we 
there kindled such a fire as could not have been 
known in that fuel-sparing land for ages. The dry- 
ing of the clothes was an affair that drew out all the 
energy and method of our compatriot, and at a late 
hour we left him moving about among the garments 
that dangled and dripped from pegs and hooks and 
lines, dealing with them as a physician with his sick, 
and tenderly nursing his dress-coat, which he wrung 
and shook and smoothed and pulled this way and 
that with a never-satisfied anxiety. At midnight, 
he hired a watcher to keep up the fire and turn the 
steaming raiment, and returning at four o'clock, 
found his watcher dead asleep before the empty 



FORZA MAGGIORE 171 

fireplace. But I rather applaud than blame the 
watcher for this. He must have been a man of 
iron nerve to fall asleep amid all that phantasmal 
show of masks and disguises. What if those reek- 
ing silks had forsaken their nails, and, decking them- 
selves with the blotted Roman scarfs and the slimy 
Roman pearls, had invited the dress-coats to look 
over the dripping photographs ? Or if all those 
drowned garments had assumed the characters of 
the people whom they had grown to resemble, and 
had sat down to hear the shade of Pia de' Tolom- 
mei rehearse the story of her sad fate in the Ma- 
remma ? I say, if a watcher could sleep in such 
company, he was right to do so. 

On the third day after our return to Grossetto we 
gathered together our damaged effects, and packed 
them into refractory trunks. Then we held the cus- 
tomary discussion with the landlord concerning the 
effrontery of his account, and drove off once more 
toward Follonica. We could scarcely recognize the 
route for the one we had recently passed over ; and 
it was not until we came to the scene of our wreck, 
and found the diligence stranded high and dry upon 
the roadside, that we could believe the whole land- 
scape about us had been flooded three days before. 
The offending stream had shrunk back to its chan- 
nel, and now seemed to feign an unconsciousness of 
its late excess, and had a virtuous air of not know- 
ing how in the world to account for that upturned 
diligence. The waters, we learned, had begun to 



172 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

subside the night after our disaster ; and the vehi- 
cle might have been righted and drawn off — for it 
was not in the least injured — forty-eight hours pre- 
viously ; but I suppose it was not en regie to touch 
it without orders from Rome. I picture it to myself 
still lying there, in the heart of the marshes, and 
thrilling sympathetic travel with the spectacle of its 
ultimate ruin : — 

" Disfecemi Maremma." 

We reached Follonica at last, and then the cars 
hurried us to Leghorn. We were thoroughly hum- 
bled in spirit, and had no longer any doubt that we 
did ill to take the diligence at Civita Vecchia in- 
stead of the steamer ; for we had been, not nineteen 
hours, but four days on the road, and we had suf- 
fered as aforementioned. 

But we were destined to be partially restored to 
our self-esteem, if not entirely comforted for our 
losses, when we sat down to dinner in the Hotel 
Washington, and the urbane head-waiter, catching 
the drift of our English discourse, asked us, — 

"Have the signori heard that the French steamer, 
which left Civita Vecchia the same day with their 
diligence, had to put back and lie in port more 
than two days on account of the storm ? She is 
but now come into Leghorn, after a very danger- 
ous passage." 






AT PADUA 




AT PADUA 



THOSE of my readers who have frequented 
the garden of Doctor Rappaccini no doubt 
recall with perfect distinctness the quaint old city 
of Padua. They remember its miles and miles of 
dim arcade over-roofing the sidewalks everywhere, 
affording excellent opportunity for the flirtation of 
lovers by day and the vengeance of rivals by night. 
They have seen the now vacant streets thronged 
with maskers, and the Venetian Podesta going in 
gorgeous state to and from the vast Palazzo della 
Ragione. They have witnessed ringing tourna- 
ments in those sad empty squares, and races in the 



176 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

Prato della Valle, and many other wonders of differ- 
ent epochs, and their pleasure makes me half sorry 
that I should have lived for several years within an 
hour by rail from Padua, and should know little or 
nothing of those great sights from actual observa- 
tion. I take shame to myself for having visited 
Padua so often and so familiarly as I used to do, — ■ 
for having been bored and hungry there, — for hav- 
ing had toothache there, upon one occasion, — for 
having rejoiced more in a cup of coffee at Pedroc- 
chi's than in the whole history of Padua, — for 
having slept repeatedly in the bad-bedded hotels of 
Padua and never once dreamt of Portia, — for hav- 
ing been more taken by the salti mortali 1 of a 
waiter who summed up my account at a Paduan res- 
taurant, than by all the strategies with which the 
city has been many times captured and recaptured. 
Had I viewed Padua only over the wall of Doctor 
Rappaccini's garden, how different my impressions 
of the city would now be ! This is one of the draw- 
backs of actual knowledge. " Ah ! how can you 
write about Spain when once you have been there ? " 
asked Heine of Theophile Gautier, setting out on a 
journey thither. 

Nevertheless it seems to me that I remember 
something about Padua with a sort of romantic 
pleasure. There was a certain charm in sauntering 
along the top of the old wall of the city, and looking 

1 Salti mortali are those prodigious efforts of mental arithmetic 
by which Italian waiters, in verbally presenting your account, 
arrive at six as the product of two and two. 



AT PADUA 177 

down upon the plumy crests of the Indian corn that 
flourished up so mightily from the dry bed of the 
moat. At such times I figured to myself the many 
sieges that the wall had known, with the fierce 
assault by day, the secret attack by night, the 
swarming foe upon the plains below, the bristling 
arms of the besieged upon the wall, the boom of the 
great mortars made of ropes and leather and throw- 
ing mighty balls of stone, the stormy flight of ar- 
rows, the ladders planted against the defenses and 
staggering headlong into the moat, enriched for fu- 
ture agriculture not only by its sluggish waters, but 
by the blood of many men. I suppose that most of 
these visions were old stage spectacles furbished up 
anew, and that my armies were chiefly equipped with 
their obsolete implements of warfare from museums 
of armor and from cabinets of antiquities ; but they 
were very vivid for all that. 

I was never able, in passing a certain one of the 
city gates, to divest myself of an historic interest in 
the great loads of hay waiting admission on the out- 
side. For an instant they masked again the Vene- 
tian troops that, in the War of the League of Cam- 
bray, entered the city in the hay-carts, shot down 
the landsknechts at the gates, and uniting with the 
citizens, cut the German garrison to pieces. But it 
was a thing long past. The German garrison was 
here again ; and the heirs of the landsknechts went 
clanking through the gate to the parade-ground, 
with that fierce clamor of their kettle-drums which 
is so much fiercer because unmingled with the noise 



178 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

of fifes. Once more now the Germans are gone, 
and, let us trust, forever ; but when I saw them, 
there seemed little hope of their going. They had 
a great Biergarten on the top of the wall, and they 
had set up the altars of their heavy Bacchus in 
many parts of the city. 

I please myself with thinking that, if I walked on 
such a spring day as this in the arcaded Paduan 
streets, I should catch glimpses, through the gate- 
ways of the palaces, of gardens full of vivid bloom, 
and of fountains that tinkle there forever. If it 
were autumn, and I were in the great market-place 
before the Palazzo della Ragione, I should hear the 
baskets of amber-hued and honeyed grapes hum- 
ming with the murmur of multitudinous bees, and 
making a music as if the wine itself were already 
singing in their gentle hearts. It is a great field 
of succulent verdure, that wide old market-place ; 
and fancy loves to browse about among its gay 
stores of fruits and vegetables, brought thither by 
the world-old peasant-women who have been bring- 
ing fruits and vegetables to the Paduan market 
for so many centuries. They sit upon the ground 
before their great panniers, and knit and doze, 
and wake up with a drowsy " Comandala ? " as you 
linger to look at their grapes. They have each a 
pair of scales, — the emblem of Injustice, — and 
will weigh you out a scant measure of the fruit if 
you like. Their faces are yellow as parchment, 
and Time has written them so full of wrinkles that 
there in not room for another line. Doubtless 



AT PADUA 179 

these old parchment visages are palimpsests, and 
would tell the whole history of Padua if you could 
get at each successive inscription. Among their 
primal records there must be some account of the 
Roman city, as each little contadinella remembered 
it on market-days ; and one might read of the terror 
of Attila's sack, a little later, with the peasant-maid's 
personal recollections of the bold Hunnish trooper 
who ate up the grapes in her basket, and kissed her 
hard, round red cheeks, — for in that time she was 
a blooming girl, — and paid nothing for either privi- 
lege. What wild and confused reminiscences on 
the wrinkled visage we should find thereafter of 
the fierce republican times, of Ecelino, of the Car- 
raras, of the Venetian rule! And is it not sad to 
think of systems and peoples all passing away, and 
these ancient women lasting still, and still selling 
grapes in front of the Palazzo della Ragione ? What 
a long mortality ! 

The youngest of their number is a thousand 
years older than the palace, which was begun in the 
twelfth century, and which is much the same now 
as it was when first completed. I know that, if I 
entered it, I should be sure of finding the great 
hall of the palace — the greatest hall in the world 
— dim and dull and dusty and delightful, with no- 
thing in it except at one end Donatello's colossal 
marble-headed wooden horse of Troy, stared at 
from the other end by the two dog-faced Egyptian 
women in basalt placed there by Belzoni. 

Late in the drowsy summer afternoons I should 



180 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

have the Court of the University all to myself, and 
might study unmolested the blazons of the noble 
youth who have attended the school in different 
centuries ever since 1200, and have left their es- 
cutcheons on the walls to commemorate them. At 
the foot of the stairway ascending to the schools 
from the court is the statue of the learned lady who 
was once a professor in the University, and who, 
if her likeness belie not her looks, must have given 
a great charm to student life in other times. At 
present there are no lady professors at Padua any 
more than at Harvard ; and during late years the 
schools have suffered greatly from the interference 
of the Austrian government, which frequently 
closed them for months, on account of political de- 
monstrations among the students. But now there 
is an end of this and many other stupid oppres- 
sions ; and the time-honored University will doubt- 
less regain its ancient importance. Even in 1864 
it had nearly fifteen hundred students, and one met 
them everywhere under the arcades, and could not 
well mistake them, with that blended air of pirate 
and dandy which the studious young men loved to 
assume. They were to be seen a good deal on the 
promenades outside the walls, where the Paduan 
ladies are driven in their carriages in the afternoon, 
and where one sees the blood-horses and fine equi- 
pages for which Padua is famous. There used once 
to be races in the Prato della Valle, after the Italian 
notion of horse-races ; but these are now discontin- 
ued, and there is nothing to be found there but the 






AT PADUA 181 

statues of scholars, and soldiers and statesmen, 
posted in a circle around the old race-course. If 
you strolled thither about dusk on such a day as 
this, you might see the statues unbend a little from 
their stony rigidity, and in the failing light nod to 
each other very pleasantly through the trees. And 
if you stayed in Padua over night, what could be 
better to-morrow morning than a stroll through the 
great Botanical Garden, — the oldest botanical gar- 
den in the world, — the garden which first received 
in Europe the strange and splendid growths of our 
hemisphere,- — the garden where Doctor Rappac- 
cini doubtless found the germ of his mortal plant ? 

The day that we first visited the city was very 
rainy, and we spent most of the time in viewing 
the churches. Their architecture forms a sort of 
border-land between the Byzantine of Venice and 
the Lombardic of Verona. The superb domes of 
St. Anthony's emulate those of St. Mark's ; and the 
porticoes of other Paduan churches rest upon the 
backs of bird-headed lions and leopards that fascinate 
with their mystery and beauty. 

It was the wish to see the attributive Giottos in 
the Chapter which drew us first to St. Anthony's, and 
we saw them with the satisfaction naturally attend- 
ing the contemplation of frescoes discovered only 
since 1858, after having been hidden under plaster 
and whitewash for many centuries ; but we could 
not believe that Giotto's fame was destined to gain 
much by their, rescue from oblivion. They are in 
nowise to be compared with this master's frescoes in 



182 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

the Chapel of the Annunziata, — which, indeed, is 
in every way a place of wonder and delight. You 
reach it by passing through a garden lane bordered 
with roses, and a taciturn gardener comes out with 
clinking keys, and lets you into the chapel, where 
there is nobody but Giotto and Dante, nor seems to 
have been for ages. Cool it is, and of a pulverous 
smell, as a sacred place should be ; a blessed bench- 
ing goes round the walls, and you sit down and take 
unlimited comfort in the frescoes. The gardener 
leaves you alone to the solitude and the silence, in 
which the talk of the painter and the exile is plain 
enough. Their contemporaries and yours are cor- 
dial in their gay companionship : through the half- 
open door falls, in a pause of the rain, the same sun- 
shine that they saw lie there ; the deathless birds 
that they heard sing out in the garden trees ; it is 
the fresh sweetness of the grass mown so many hun- 
dred years ago that breathes through all the lovely 
garden grounds. 

But in the midst of this pleasant communion 
with the past you have a lurking pain ; for you have 
hired your brougham by the hour ; and you pre- 
sently quit the Chapel of Giotto on this account. 

We had chosen our driver from among many 
other drivers of broughams in the vicinity of Pedroc- 
chi's, because he had such an honest look, and was 
not likely, we thought, to deal unfairly with us. 

"But first," said the signorwho had selected him, 
H how much is your brougham an hour? " 

So and so. 



AT PADUA 183 

" Show me the tariff of fares." 

" There is no tariff." 

"There is. Show it to me." 

"It is lost, signor." 

" I think not. It is here in this pocket. Get it 
out." 

The tariff appears, and with it the fact that he 
had demanded just what the boatman of the ballad 
received in gift, — thrice his fee. 

The driver mounted his seat, and served us so 
faithfully that day in Padua that we took him the 
next day for Arqua. At the end, when he had re- 
ceived his due, and a handsome mancia besides, he 
was still unsatisfied, and referred to the tariff in 
proof that he had been underpaid. On that con- 
fronted and defeated, he thanked us very cordially, 
gave us the number of his brougham, and begged us 
to ask for him when we came next to Padua and 
needed a carriage. 

From the Chapel of the Annunziata he drove us 
to the Church of Santa Giustina, where is a very 
famous and noble picture by Romanino. But as this 
writing has nothing in the world to do with art, I 
here dismiss that subject, and with a gross and idle 
delight follow the sacristan down under the church 
to the prison of Santa Giustina. 

Of all the faculties of the mind there is none so 
little fatiguing to exercise as mere wonder ; and for 
my own sake, I try always to wonder at things with- 
out the least critical reservation. I therefore, in 
the sense of deglutition, bolted this prison at once, 



1 84 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

though subsequent experiences led me to look with 
grave indigestion upon the whole idea of prisons, 
their authenticity, and even their existence. 

As far as mere dimensions are concerned, the 
prison of Santa Giustina was not a hard one to swal- 
low, being only three feet wide by about ten feet in 
length. In this limited space, Santa Giustina passed 
five years of the reign of Nero and was then brought 
out into the larger cell adjoining, to suffer a blessed 
martyrdom. I am not sure now whether the sacris- 
tan said she was dashed to death on the stones, or 
cut to pieces with knives ; but whatever the form 
of martyrdom, an iron ring in the ceiling was em- 
ployed in it, as I know from seeing the ring, — 
a curiously well-preserved piece of ironmongery. 
Within the narrow prison of the saint, and just 
under the grating, through which the sacristan thrust 
his candle to illuminate it, was a mountain of can- 
dle-drippings, — a monument to the fact that faith 
still largely exists in this doubting world. My own 
credulity, not only with regard to this prison, but 
also touching the coffin of St. Luke, which I saw 
in the church, had so wrought upon the esteem of 
the sacristan that he now took me to a well, into 
which, he said, had been cast the bones of three 
thousand Christian martyrs. He lowered a lantern 
into the well, and assured me that, if I looked through 
a certain screen work there, I could see the bones. 
On experiment I could not see the bones, but this 
circumstance did not cause me to doubt their pre- 
sence, particularly as I did see upon the screen a 



AT PADUA 185 

great number of coins offered for the repose of the 
martyrs' souls. I threw down some soldi, and thus 
enthralled the sacristan. 

If the signor cared to see prisons, he said, the 
driver must take him to those of Ecelino, at present 
the property of a private gentleman near by. As I 
had just bought a history of Ecelino, at a great bar- 
gain, from a second-hand book-stall, and had a lively 
interest in all the enormities of that nobleman, I 
sped the driver instantly to the villa of the Signor 
P . 

It depends here altogether upon the freshness or 
mustiness of the reader's historical reading whether 
he cares to be reminded more particularly who Ece- 
lino was. He flourished balefully in the early half 
of the thirteenth century as lord of Vicenza, Verona, 
Padua, and Brescia, and was defeated and hurt to 
death in an attempt to possess himself of Milan. He 
was in every respect a remarkable man for that time, 
— fearless, abstemious, continent, avaricious, hardy, 
and unspeakably ambitious and cruel. He survived 
and suppressed innumerable conspiracies, escaping 
even the thrust of the assassin whom the fame of 
his enormous wickedness had caused the Old Man 
of the Mountain to send against him. As lord of 
Padua he was more incredibly severe and bloody in 
his rule than as lord of the other cities, for the Pa- 
duans had been latest free, and conspired the most 
frequently against him. He extirpated whole fami- 
lies on suspicion that a single member had been con- 
cerned in a meditated revolt. Little children and 



1 86 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

helpless women suffered hideous mutilation and 
shame at his hands. Six prisons in Padua were 
constantly filled by his arrests. The whole country 
was traversed by witnesses of his cruelties — men 
and women deprived of an arm or leg, and begging 
from door to door. He had long been excommuni- 
cated ; at last the Church proclaimed a crusade 
against him, and his lieutenant and nephew — more 
demoniacal, if possible, than himself — was driven 
out of Padua while he was operating against Mantua. 
Ecelino retired to Verona, and maintained a struggle 
against the crusade for nearly two years longer, with 
a courage which never failed him. Wounded and 
taken prisoner, the soldiers of the victorious army 
gathered about him, and heaped insult and reproach 
upon him ; and one furious peasant, whose brother's 
feet had been cut off by Ecelino's command, dealt 
the helpless monster four blows upon the head with 
a scythe. By some, Ecelino is said to have died of 
these wounds alone ; but by others it is related that 
his death was a kind of suicide, inasmuch as he him- 
self put the case past surgery by tearing off the 
bandages from his hurts, and refusing all medicines. 

ii 

Entering at the enchanted portal of the Villa 

P , we found ourselves in a realm of wonder. 

It was our misfortune not to see the magician who 
compelled all the marvels on which we looked, but 
for that very reason, perhaps, we have the clearest 
sense of his greatness. Everywhere we beheld the 



AT PADUA 187 

evidences of his ingenious but lugubrious fancy, 
which everywhere tended to a monumental and mor- 
tuary effect. A sort of vestibule first received us, 
and beyond this dripped and glimmered the garden. 
The walls of the vestibule were covered with inscrip- 
tions setting forth the sentiments of the philosophy 
and piety of all ages concerning life and death ; we 
began with Confucius, and we ended with Benja- 
mino Franklino. But as if these ideas of mortality 
were not sufficiently depressing, the funereal Signor 

P had collected into earthen amphorce the ashes 

of the most famous men of ancient and modern 
times, and arranged them so that a sense of their 
number and variety should at once strike his visitor. 
Each jar was conspicuously labeled with the name 
its illustrious dust had borne in life; and if one 
escaped with comparative cheerfulness from the 
thought that Seneca had died, there were in the 
very next pot the cinders of Napoleon to bully him 
back to a sense of his mortality. 

We were glad to have the gloomy fascination of 
these objects broken by the custodian, who ap- 
proached to ask if we wished to see the prisons of 
Ecelino, and we willingly followed him into the rain 
out of our sepulchral shelter. 

Between the vestibule and the towers of the ty- 
rant lay that garden already mentioned, and our 
guide led us through ranks of weeping statuary, and 
rainy bowers, and showery lanes of shrubbery, until 
we reached the door of his cottage. While he en- 
tered to fetch the key to the prisons, we noted that 



188 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

the towers were freshly painted and in perfect re 
pair ; and indeed the custodian said frankly enough, 
on reappearing, that they were merely built over 
the prisons on the site of the original towers. The 
storied stream of the Bacchiglione sweeps through 
the grounds, and now, swollen by the rainfall, it 
roared, a yellow torrent, under a corner of the pris- 
ons. The towers rise from masses of foliage, and 
form no unpleasing feature of what must be, in spite 

of Signor P , a delightful Italian garden in sunny 

weather. The ground is not so flat as elsewhere in 
Padua, and this inequality gives an additional pic- 
turesqueness to the place. But as we were come 
in search of horrors, we scorned these merely lovely 
things, and hastened to immure ourselves in the 
dungeons below. The custodian, lighting a candle 
(which ought, we felt, to have been a torch), went 
before. 

We found the cells, though narrow and dark, not 
uncomfortable, and the guide conceded that they 
had undergone some repairs since Ecelino's time. 
But all the horrors for which we had come were 
there in perfect grisliness, and labeled by the in- 
genious Signor P with Latin inscriptions. 

In the first cell was a shrine of the Virgin, set 
in the wall. Beneath this, while the wretched 
prisoner knelt in prayer, a trap-door opened and 
precipitated him upon the points of knives, from 
which his body fell into the Bacchiglione below. 
In the next cell, held by some rusty iron rings to 
the wall, was a skeleton, hanging by the wrists. 



AT PADUA 189 

"This," said the guide, "was another punish- 
ment of which Ecelino was very fond." 

A dreadful doubt seized my mind. "Was this 
skeleton found here ? " I demanded. 

Without faltering an instant, without so much as 
winking an eye, the custodian replied, " Apfiunto." 

It was a great relief, and restored me to confi- 
dence in the establishment. I am at a loss to ex- 
plain how my faith should have been confirmed 
afterwards by coming upon a guillotine — an awful 
instrument in the likeness of a straw-chopper, with 
a decapitated wooden figure under its blade — 
which the custodian confessed to be a modern 

improvement placed there by Signor P . Yet 

my credulity was so strengthened by his candor, 
that I accepted without hesitation the torture of 
the water-drop when we came to it. The water-jar 
was as well preserved as if placed there but yester- 
day, and the skeleton beneath it — found as we saw 
it — ■ was entire and perfect. 

In the adjoining cell sat a skeleton — found as 
we saw it — with its neck in the clutch of the gar- 
rote, which was one of Ecelino's more merciful 
punishments ; while in still another cell the ferocity 
of the tyrant appeared in the penalty inflicted upon 
the wretch whose skeleton had been hanging for 
ages — as we saw it — head downwards from the 
ceiling. 

Beyond these, in a yet darker and drearier dun- 
geon, stood a heavy oblong wooden box, with two 
apertures near the top, peering through which we 



190 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

found that we were looking into the eyeless sockets 
of a skull. Within this box Ecelino had immured 
the victim we beheld there, and left him to perish 
in view of the platters of food and goblets of drink 
placed just beyond the reach of his hands. The 
food we saw was of course not the original food. 

At last we came to the crowning horror of Villa 

P , the supreme excess of Ecelino's cruelty. 

The guide entered the cell before us, and, as we 
gained the threshold, threw the light of his taper 
vividly upon a block that stood in the middle of the 
floor. Fixed to the block by an immense spike 
driven through from the back was the little slender 
hand of a woman, which lay there just as it had 
been struck from the living arm, and which, after 
the lapse of so many centuries, was still as perfectly 
preserved as if it had been embalmed. The sight 
had a most cruel fascination ; and while one of the 
horror-seekers stood helplessly conjuring to his 
vision that scene of unknown dread, — the shrink- 
ing, shrieking woman dragged to the block, the 
wild, shrill, horrible screech following the blow that 
drove in the spike, the merciful swoon after the 
mutilation, — his companion, with a sudden pallor, 
demanded to be taken instantly away. 

In their swift withdrawal, they only glanced at a 
few detached instruments of torture, — all original 
Ecelinos, but intended for the infliction of minor 
and comparatively unimportant torments, — and 
then they passed from that place of fear. 



AT PADUA 191 

in 

In the evening we sat talking at the Cafite Pe- 
drocchi with an abbate, an acquaintance of ours, 
who was a professor in the University of Padua. 
Pedrocchi's is the great caffe of Padua, a granite 
edifice of Egyptian architecture, which is the mau- 
soleum of the proprietor's fortune. The pecuniary 
skeleton at the feast, however, does not much 
trouble the guests. They begin early in the even- 
ing to gather into the elegant saloons of the caffe, 

— somewhat too large for so small a city as Padua, 

— and they sit there late in the night over their 
cheerful cups and their ices, with their newspapers 
and their talk. Not so many ladies are to be seen 
as at the caffe in Venice, for it is only in the greater 
cities that they go much to these public places. 
There are few students at Pedrocchi's, for they fre- 
quent the cheaper caffe ; but you may nearly always 
find there some professor of the University, and on 
the evening of which I speak there were two present 
besides our abbate. Our friend's great passion was 
the English language, which he understood too well 
to venture to speak a great deal. He had been 
translating from that tongue into Italian certain 
American poems, and our talk was of these at first. 

At last, turning from literature, we spoke with 
the gentle abbate of our day's adventures, and 
eagerly related that of the Ecelino prisons. To 
have seen them was the most terrific pleasure of 
our lives. 



i 9 2 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

"Eh ! " said our friend, " I believe you." 

" We mean those under the Villa P ." 

"Exactly." 

There was a tone of politely suppressed amuse- 
ment in the abbate's voice ; and after a moment's 
pause, in which we felt our awful experience slip- 
ping and sliding away from us, we ventured to say, 
" You don't mean that those are not the veritable 
Ecelino prisons ? " 

"Certainly they are nothing of the kind. The 
Ecelino prisons were destroyed when the Crusad- 
ers took Padua, with the exception of the tower, 
which the Venetian Republic converted into an ob- 
servatory.'* 

" But at least these prisons are on the site of 
Ecelino's castle ? " 

"Nothing of the sort. His castle in that case 
would have been outside of the old city walls. ,, 

" And those tortures and the prisons are all " — 

"Things got up for show. No doubt, Ecelino 
used such things, and many worse, of which even 

the ingenuity of Signor P cannot conceive. 

But he is an eccentric man, loving the horrors of 
history, and what he can do to realize them he has 
done in his prisons." 

" But the custodian — how could he lie so ? " 

Our friend shrugged his shoulders. " Eh ! easily. 
And perhaps he even believed what he said." 

The world began to assume an aspect of bewil- 
dering ungenuineness, and there seemed to be a 
treacherous quality of fiction in the ground under 



AT PADUA 193 

our feet. Even the play at the pretty little Teatro 
Sociale, where we went to pass the rest of the even- 
ing, appeared hollow and improbable. We thought 
the hero something of a bore, with his patience 
and goodness ; and as for the heroine, pursued by 
the attentions of the rich profligate, we doubted if 
she were any better than she should be. 



PETRARCH'S HOUSE 








L#cy ^vs?®?'???** 







A PILGRIMAGE TO PETRARCH'S HOUSE 
AT ARQUA 



WE said, during summer days at Venice, 
when every campo was a furnace seven 
times heated, and every canal was filled with boiling 
bathers, "As soon as it rains we will go to Arqua." 
Remembering the ardors of an April sun on the 
long, level roads of plain, we could not think of 
them in August without a sense of dust clogging 
every pore, and eyes that shrank from the vision of 
their blinding whiteness. So we stayed in Venice, 
waiting for rain, until the summer had almost lapsed 
into autumn ; and as the weather cooled before any 
rain reached us, we took the moisture on the main- 
land for granted, and set out under a cloudy and 
windy sky. 



198 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

We had to go to Padua by railway, and take car- 
riage thence to Arqua upon the road to Ferrara. I 
believe no rule of human experience was violated 
when it began to rain directly after we reached 
Padua, and continued to rain violently the whole 
day. We gave up this day entirely to the rain, and 
did not leave Padua until the following morning, 
when we count that our pilgrimage to Petrarch's 
house actually began. 

The rain had cooled and freshened the air, but it 
was already too late in the season for the summer 
to recover herself with the elastic brilliancy that 
follows the rain of July or early August ; and there 
was I know not what vague sentiment of autumn 
in the weather. There was not yet enough of it to 
stir the 

" Tears from the depth of some divine despair ; " 

but in here and there a faded leaf in the purple of 
the ripening grapes, and in the tawny grass of the 
pastures, there was autumn enough to touch our 
spirits, and, while it hardly affected the tone of the 
landscape, to lay upon us the gentle and pensive 
spell of its presence. Of all the days in the year I 
would have chosen this to go pilgrim to the house 
of Petrarch. 

The Euganean Hills, on one of which the poet's 
house is built, are those mellow heights which you 
see when you look southwest across the lagoon at 
Venice. In misty weather they are blue, and in 
clear weather silver, and the October sunset loves 



PETRARCH'S HOUSE 199 

them. They rise in tender azure before you as you 
issue from the southern gate of Padua, and grow in 
loveliness as you draw nearer to them from the rich 
plain that washes their feet with endless harvests. 

Oh beauty that will not let itself be told ! Could 
I not take warning from another, and refrain from 
this fruitless effort of description ? A friend in 
Padua had lent me Disraeli's "Venetia," because a 
passage of the story occurs in Petrarch's house at 
Arqua, and we carried the volumes with us on our 
pilgrimage. I would here quote the description of 
the village, the house, and the hills from this work, 
as faultlessly true, and as affording no just idea of 
either : but nothing of it has remained in my mind 
except the geological fact that the hills are a vol- 
canic range. To tell the truth, the landscape, as 
we rode along, continually took my mind off the 
book, and I could not give that attention, either 
to the elegant language of its descriptions or the 
adventures of its well-born characters, which they 
deserved. I was even more interested in the dis- 
reputable looking person who mounted the box 
beside our driver as soon as we got out of the city 
gate, and who invariably commits this infringement 
upon your rights in Italy, no matter how strictly 
and cunningly you frame your contract that no one 
else is to occupy any part of the carriage but your- 
self. He got down, in this instance, just before we 
reached the little town at which our driver stopped, 
and asked us if we wished to drink a glass of the 
wine of the country. We did not, but his own 



200 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

thirst seemed to answer equally well, and he slaked 
it cheerfully at our cost. 

The fields did not present the busy appearance 
which had delighted us on the same road in the 
spring, but they had that autumnal charm already 
mentioned. Many of the vine-leaves were sear ; 
the red grapes were already purple, and the white 
grapes pearly ripe, and they formed a gorgeous 
necklace for the trees, around which they clung in 
opulent festoons. Then, dearer to our American 
hearts than this southern splendor were the russet 
fields of Indian corn, and, scattered among the 
shrunken stalks, great nuggets of the "<harmless 
gold " of pumpkins. 

At Battaglia (the village just beyond which you 
turn off to go to Arqua) there was a fair, on the 
blessed occasion of some saint's day, and there were 
many booths full of fruits, agricultural implements, 
toys, clothes, wooden ware, and the like. There 
was a great crowd and a noise, but, according to the 
mysterious Italian custom, nobody seemed to be 
buying or selling. I am in the belief that a small 
purchase of grapes we made here on our return was 
the great transaction of the day, unless, indeed, the 
neat operation in alms achieved at our expense by 
a mendicant villager may be classed commercially. 

When we turned off from the Rovigo road at 
Battaglia we were only three miles from Arqua. 






PETRARCH'S HOUSE 201 

n 

Now, all the way from this turning to the foot of 
the hill on which the village was stretched asleep in 
the tender sunshine, there was on either side of the 
road a stream of living water. There was no other 
barrier than this between the road and the fields 
(unless the vines swinging from tree to tree formed 
a barrier), and, as if in graceful excuse for the inter- 
position of even these slender streams, Nature had 
lavished such growth of wild flowers and wild ber- 
ries on the banks that it was like a garden avenue, 
through the fragrance and beauty of which we 
rolled, delighted to silence, almost to sadness. 

When we began to climb the hill to Arqua, and 
the driver stopped to breathe his horse, I got out 
and finished the easy ascent on foot. The great 
marvel to me is that the prospect of the vast plain 
below, on which, turning back, I feasted my vision, 
should be there yet, and always. It had the rare 
and melancholy beauty of evanescence, and I won- 
der did Petrarch walk often down this road from 
his house just above ? I figured him coming to 
meet me with his book in his hand, in his reverend 
poetic robes, and with his laurel on, over that curi- 
ous kind of bandaging which he seems to have been 
fond of — looking, in a word, for all the world like 
the neuralgic Petrarch in the pictures. 

Drawing nearer, I discerned the apparition to be 
a robeless, laurelless lout, who belonged at the vil- 
lage inn. Yet this lout, though not Petrarch, had 



202 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

merits. His face and hands, and his legs as seen 
from his knees down, were richly tanned ; he wore 
a mountain cap with a long tasseled fall to the back 
of it ; his face was comely and his eye beautiful ; 
and he was so nobly ignorant of everything, that a 
colt or young bullock could not have been better 
company. He merely offered to guide us to Pe- 
trarch's house, and was silent, except when spoken 
to, from that instant. 

I am here tempted to say : Arqua is in the figure 
of a man stretched upon the hillslope. The head, 
which is Petrarch's house, rests upon the summit. 
The carelessly tossed arms lie abroad from this in 
one direction, and the legs in the opposite quarter. 
It is a very lank and shambling figure, without ele- 
gance or much proportion and the attitude is the 
last wantonness of loafing. We followed our lout 
up the right leg, which is a gentle and easy ascent 
in the general likeness of a street. World-old stone 
cottages crouch on either side ; here and there is a 
more ambitious house in decay ; trees wave over the 
street, and down its distance comes an occasional 
donkey-cart very musically and leisurely. 

We reached Petrarch's house before the custodian 
had arrived to admit us, and stood before the high 
stone wall which shuts in the front of the house, 
and quite hides it from those without. This wall 
bears the inscription, Casa Petrarca, and a marbL 
tablet lettered to the following effect : — 



PETRARCH'S HOUSE 203 

SETI AGITA 

SACRO A MORE DI PATRIA, 

T'lNCHINA A QUESTE MURA 

OVE SPIRO LA GRAND' AN IMA, 

IL CANTOR DEI SCIPIONI 

E DI LAURA. 

Which may be translated : " If thou art stirred by 
love of country, bow to these walls, whence passed 
the great soul, the singer of the Scipios and of 
Laura." 

Meanwhile we became the centre of a group of 
the youths of Arqua, who had kindly attended our 
progress in gradually increasing numbers from the 
moment we had entered the village. They were 
dear little girls and boys, and mountain babies, all 
with sunburnt faces and the gentle and the winning 
ways native to this race, which Nature loves better 
than us of the North. The blonde pilgrim seemed 
to please them, and they evidently took us for 
Tedeschi. You learn to submit to this fate in 
Northern Italy, however ungracefully, for it is the 
one that constantly befalls you outside of the great- 
est cities. The people know but two varieties of 
foreigners — the Englishman and the German. If, 
therefore, you have not rosbif expressed in every 
lineament of your countenance, you must resign 
yourself to be a German. This is grievous to the 
soul which loves to spread its eagle in every land 
and to be known as American, with star-spangled 
conspicuousness all over the world : but it cannot 
be helped. I vainly tried to explain the geographi- 
cal, political, and natural difference between Tede- 



204 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

schi and Americani to the custodian of Petrarch's 
house. She listened with amiability, shrugged her 
shoulders hopelessly, and said, in her rude Vene- 
tian, "Mi no so miga " (I don't know at all). 

Before she came, I had a mind to prove the celeb- 
rity of a poet on the spot where he lived and died, 
— on his very hearthstone, as it were. So I asked 
the lout, who stood gnawing a stick and shifting 
his weight from one foot to the other, — 

" When did Petrarch live here ? " 

" Ah ! I don't remember him." 

" Who was he ? " 

"A poet, signor." 

Certainly the first response was not encouraging, 
but the last revealed that even to the heavy and 
clouded soul of this lout the divine fame of the poet 
had penetrated — and he a lout in the village where 
Petrarch lived and ought to be first forgotten. He 
did not know when Petrarch had lived there, — a 
year ago, perhaps, or many centuries, — but he knew 
that Petrarch was a poet. A weight of doubt was 
lifted from my spirit, and I responded cheerfully to 
some observations on the weather offered by a rustic 
matron who was pitching manure on the little hill- 
slope near the house. When at last the custodian 
came and opened the gate to us, we entered a little 
grassy yard from which a flight of steps led to Pe- 
trarch's door. A few flowers grew wild among the 
grass, and a fig-tree leaned its boughs against the 
wall. The figs on it were green, though they hung 
ripe and blackening on every other tree in Arqui. 



PETRARCH'S HOUSE 205 

Some ivy clung to the stones, and from this and the 
fig-tree, as we came away, we plucked memorial 
leaves, and blended them with flowers which the 
youth of Arqua picked and forced upon us for re- 
membrance. 

A quaint old door opened into the little stone 
house, and admitted us to a kind of wide passageway 
with rooms on either side ; and at the end opposite 
to which we entered another door opened upon a 
balcony. From this balcony we looked down on Pe- 
trarch's garden, which, presently speaking, is but a 
narrow space with more fruit than flowers in it. Did 
Petrarch use to sit and meditate in this garden ? For 
me I should better have liked a chair on the balcony, 
with the further and lovelier prospect on every hand 
of village-roofs, sloping hills all gray with olives, 
and the broad, blue Lombard plain, sweeping from 
heaven to heaven below. 

The walls of the passageway are frescoed (now 
very faintly) in illustration of the loves of Petrarch 
and Laura, with verses from the sonnets inscribed to 
explain the illustrations. In all these Laura prevails 
as a lady of a singularly long waist and stiff move- 
ments, and Petrarch, with his face tied up and a lily 
in his hand, contemplates the flower in mingled bot- 
any and toothache. There is occasionally a startling 
literalness in the way the painter has rendered some 
of the verses. I remember with peculiar interest 
the illustration of a lachrymose passage concern- 
ing a river of tears, wherein the weeping Petrarch, 
stretched beneath a tree, had already started a small 



206 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

creek of tears, which was rapidly swelling to a flood 
with the torrent from his eyes. I attribute these 
frescoes to a later date than that of the poet's resi- 
dence, but the portrait over the door of the bedroom 
inside of the chamber was of his own time, and 
taken from him — the custodian said. As it seemed 
to look like all the Petrarchian portraits, I did not 
remark it closely, but rather turned my attention to 
the walls of the chamber, which were thickly over- 
scribbled with names. They were nearly all Italian, 
and none English so far as I saw. This passion for 
allying one's self to the great, by inscribing one's 
name on places hallowed by them, is certainly very 
odd ; and (I reflected as I added our names to the 
rest) it is, without doubt, the most impertinent and 
idiotic custom in the world. People have thus writ- 
ten themselves down, to the contempt of futurity, 
all over Petrarch's house. 

The custodian insisted that the bedroom was just 
as in the poet's time ; some rooms beyond it had 
been restored ; the kitchen at its side was also re- 
paired. Crossing the passageway, we entered the 
dining-room, which was comparatively large and 
lofty, with a generous fireplace at one end, occupy- 
ing the whole space left by a balcony window. The 
floor was paved with tiles, and the window-panes 
were round and small, and set in lead — like the 
floors and window-panes of all the other rooms. A 
fresco, representing some indelicate female deity, 
adorned the front of the fireplace, which sloped 
expanding from the ceiling and terminated at the 



/ 

PETRARCH'S HOUSE 207 

mouth without a mantel piece. The chimney was 
deep, and told of the cold winters in the hills, of 
which, afterward, the landlady of the village inn 
prattled less eloquently. 

From this dining-room opens, to the right, the 
door of the room which they called Petrarch's 
library ; and above the door, set in a marble frame, 
with a glass before it, is all that is mortal of Pe- 
trarch's cat, except the hair. Whether or not the 
fur was found incompatible with the process of em- 
balming, and therefore removed, or whether it has 
slowly dropped away with the lapse of centuries, I 
do not know ; but it is certain the cat is now quite 
bald. On the marble slab below there is a Latin 
inscription, said to be by the great poet himself, 
declaring this cat to have been "second only to 
Laura." We may therefore believe its virtues to 
have been rare enough ; and cannot well figure to 
ourselves Petrarch sitting before that wide-mouthed 
fireplace, without beholding also the gifted cat that 
purrs softly at his feet and nestles on his knees, or, 
with thickened tail and lifted back, parades loftily 
round his chair in the haughty and disdainful man- 
ner of cats. 

In the library, protected against the predatory 
enthusiasm of visitors by a heavy wire netting, are 
the desk and chair of Petrarch, which I know of no 
form of words to describe perfectly. The front of 
the desk is of a kind of mosaic in cubes of wood, 
most of which have been carried away. The chair 
is wide-armed and carved, but the bottom is gone, 



208 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

and it has been rudely repaired. The custodian 
said Petrarch died in this chair while he sat writing 
at his desk in the little nook lighted by a single 
window opening on the left from his library. He 
loved to sit there. As I entered I found he had 
stepped out for a moment, but I know he returned 
directly after I withdrew. 

On one wall of the library (which is a simple ob- 
long room, in no wise remarkable) was a copy of 
verses in a frame, by Cesarotti, and on the wall op- 
posite a tribute from Alfieri, both manu pi'opria. 
Over and above these are many other scribblings ; 
and hanging over the door of the poet's little nook 
was a criminal French lithograph likeness of " Pe- 
trarque " when young. 

Alfieri's verses are written in ink on the wall, 
while those of Cesarotti are on paper, and framed. 
I do not remember any reference to his visit to Pe- 
trarch's house in Alfieri's autobiography, though 
the visit must have taken place in 1783, when he 
sojourned at Padua, and "made the acquaintance 
of the celebrated Cesarotti, with whose lively and 
courteous manners he was no less satisfied than he 
had always been in reading his (Cesarotti's) most 
masterly version of i Ossian.' " It is probable that 
the friends visited the house together. At any rate, 
I care to believe that while Cesarotti sat " compos- 
ing " his tribute comfortably at the table, Alfieri's 
impetuous soul was lifting his tall body on tiptoe to 
scrawl its inspirations on the plastering. 

After copying these verses we returned to the 



PETRARCH'S HOUSE 209 

dining-room, and while one pilgrim strayed idly 
through the names in the visitor's book, the other 
sketched Petrarch's cat, before mentioned, and Pe- 
trarch's inkstand of bronze. Thus sketching and 
idling, we held spell-bound our friends the youth of 
Arqua, as well as our driver, who, having brought 
innumerable people to see the house of Petrarch, 
now for the first time, with great astonishment, be- 
held the inside of it himself. 

As to the authenticity of the house I think there 
can be no doubt, and as to the genuineness of the 
relics there, nothing in the w r orld could shake my 
faith in them, though Muratori certainly character- 
izes them as "superstitions." The great poet was 
sixty-five years old when he came to rest at Arqua, 
and when, in his own pathetic words, " there re- 
mained to him only to consider and to desire how to 
make a good end." He says further, at the close 
of his autobiography : " In one of the Euganean 
hills, near to ten miles from the city of Padua, I 
have built me a house, small but pleasant and de- 
cent, in the midst of slopes clothed with vines and 
olives, abundantly sufficient for a family not large 
and discreet. Here I lead my life, and although, 
as I have said, infirm of body, yet tranquil of mind, 
without excitements, without distractions, without 
cares, reading always, and writing and praising God, 
and thanking God as well for evil as for good ; 
which evil, if I err not, is trial merely and not 
punishment. And all the while I pray to Christ 
that he make good the end of my life, and have 



210 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

mercy on me, and forgive me, and even forget my 
youthful sins ; wherefore, in this solitude, no words 
are so sweet to my lips as these of the psalm : 
' Delicta juventutis mece, et ignorantias meas ne 
memineris! And with every feeling of the heart 
I pray God, when it please Him, to bridle my 
thoughts, so long unstable and erring ; and as they 
have vainly wandered to many things, to turn them 
all to Him — only true, certain immutable Good." 

I venerate the house at Arqua because these 
sweet and solemn words were written in it. We 
left its revered shelter (after taking a final look 
from the balcony down upon "the slopes clothed 
with vines and olives ,, ) and returned to the lower 
village, where, in the court of the little church, we 
saw the tomb of Petrarch — " an ark of red stone, 
upon four columns likewise of marble." The epi- 
taph is this : — 

" Frigida Francisci lapis hie tegit ossa Petrarcae ; 
Suscipe, Virgo parens, animam ; sate Virgine, parce 
Fessaque jam terris Cceli requiescat in arce." 

A head of the poet in bronze surmounts the ark. 
The housekeeper of the parish priest, who ran out 
to enjoy my admiration and bounty, told me a wild 
local tradition of an attempt on the part of the 
Florentines to steal the bones of Petrarch away 
from Arqua, in proof of which she showed me a 
block of marble set into the ark, whence she said 
a fragment had been removed by the Florentines. 
This local tradition I afterwards found verified, 
with names and dates, in a little " Life of Petrarch," 






PETRARCH'S HOUSE 211 

by F. Leoni, published at Padua in 1843. It ap- 
pears that this curious attempt of the Florentines 
to do doubtful honor to the great citizen whose 
hereditary civic rights they restored too late (about 
the time he was drawing nigh his "good end" at 
Arqua), was made for them by a certain monk of 
Portagruaro named Tommaso Martinelli. He had 
a general instruction from his employers to bring 
away from Arqua " any important thing of Pe- 
trarch's " that he could ; and it occurred to this ill- 
advised friar to "move his bones." He succeeded 
on a night of the year 1630 in stealing the dead 
poet's arm. The theft being at once discovered, 
the Venetian Republic rested not till the thief was 
also discovered ; but what became of the arm or of 
the sacrilegious monk neither the Signor Leoni nor 
the old women of Arqua give any account. The 
Republic removed the rest of Petrarch's body, 
which is now said to be in the Royal Museum of 
Madrid. 

I was willing to know more of this quaint village 
of Arqua, and I rang at the parish priest's door to 
beg of him some account of the place, if any were 
printed. But already at one o'clock he had gone to 
bed for a nap, and must on no account be roused till 
four. It is but a quiet life men lead in Arqua, and 
their souls are in drowsy hands. The amount of sleep 
which this good man gives himself (if he goes to 
bed at 9 p. m. and rises at 9 a. m., with a nap of three 
hours during the day) speaks of a quiet conscience, 
a good digestion, and uneventful days. As I turned 



212 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

this notion over in my mind, my longing to behold 
his reverence increased, that I might read life at 
Arqua in the smooth curves of his well-padded coun- 
tenance. 

Ought I to say here that, on the occasion of a sec- 
ond visit to Arqua, I succeeded in finding this excel- 
lent ecclesiastic wide awake at two o'clock in the 
afternoon, and that he granted me an interview at 
that hour ? Justice to him, I think, demands this 
admission of me. He was not at all a fat priest, as 
I had prefigured him, but rather of a spare person, 
and of a brisk and lively manner. At the village 
inn, after listening half an hour to a discourse on 
nothing but white wine from a young priest, who 
had stopped to drink a glass of it, I was put in the 
way of seeing the priest of Arqua by his courtesy. 
Happily enough, his reverence chanced to have the 
very thing I wanted to see — no other than Leoni's 
" Life of Petrarch/' to which I have already referred. 
Courtesy is the blood in an Italian's veins, and I 
need not say that the ecclesiastic of Arqua, seeing 
my interest in the place, was very polite and obliging. 
But he continued to sleep throughout our first stay 
in Arqua, and I did not see him then. 

I strolled up and down the lazy, rambling streets, 
and chiefly devoted myself to watching the young 
women who were washing clothes at the stream run- 
ning from the " Fountain of Petrarch." Their arms 
and legs were bronzed and bare, and they chattered 
and laughed gayly at their work. Their wash-tubs 
were formed by a long marble conduit from the foun- 






PETRARCH'S HOUSE 213 

tain ; their wash-boards, by the inward-sloping con- 
duit-sides ; and they thrashed and beat the garments 
clean upon the smooth stone. To a girl, their waists 
were broad and their ankles thick. Above their 
foreheads the hair was cut short, and their " back 
hair " was gathered into a mass, and held together 
by a converging circle of silver pins. The Piazza 
della Fontana, in Arqua, is a place some fifty feet 
in length and breadth, and seems to be a favorite 
place of public resort. In the evening, doubtless, 
it is alive with gossipers, as now with workers. It 
may be that then his reverence, risen from his nap, 
saunters by, and pauses long enough to chuck a 
pretty girl under the chin or pinch an urchin's 
cheek. 

in 

Returning, we stopped at the great castle of the 
Obizzi (now the property of the Duke of Modena), 
through which we were conducted by a surly and 
humorous custode, whose pride in life was that castle 
and its treasures, so that he resented as a personal 
affront the slightest interest in anything else. He 
stopped us abruptly in the midst of the museum, 
and, regarding the precious antiques and curiosities 
around him, demanded, — 

" Does this castle please you ? " Then, with a 
scornful glance at us, " Your driver tells me you 
have been at Arqua ? And what did you see at 
Arqua? A shabby little house and a cat without 
any hair on. I would not," said this disdainful cus- 
tode> "go to Arqua if you gave me a lemonade/' 



THE CIMBRI 




A VISIT TO THE CIMBRI 



I HAD often heard in Venice of that ancient peo- 
ple, settled in the Alpine hills about the pretty 
town of Bassano, on the Brenta, whom common fame 
declares to be a remnant of the Cimbrian invaders of 
Rome, broken up in battle, and dispersed along the 
borders of North Italy, by Marius, many centuries 
ago. So once, when the soft September weather 
came, we sallied out of Venice, in three, to make 
conquest of whatever was curious in the life and tra- 
ditions of these mountaineers, who dwell in seven 
villages, and are therefore called the people of the 
Sette Communi among their Italian neighbors. We 
went fully armed with note-book and sketch-book, 
and prepared to take literary possession of our con- 
quest. 



218 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

From Venice to the city of Vicenza by railroad 
it is two hours ; and thence one must take a carriage 
to Bassano (which is an opulent and busy little grain 
mart, of some twelve thousand souls, about thirty 
miles north of Venice). We were very glad of the 
ride across the country. By the time we reached 
the town it was nine o'clock, and moonlight, and as 
we glanced out of our windows we saw the quaint 
up-and-down-hill streets peopled with promenaders, 
and everybody in Bassano seemed to be making 
love. Young girls strolled about the picturesque 
ways with their lovers, and tender couples were 
cooing at the doorways and windows, and the scene 
had all that surface of romance with which the Ital- 
ians contrive to varnish the real commonplaceness 
of life. Our drive through the twilight landscape 
had prepared us for the sentiment of Bassano ; we 
had pleased ourselves with the spectacle of the peas- 
ants returning from their labor in the fields, led in 
troops of eight or ten by stalwart, white-teethed bare- 
legged maids ; and we had reveled in the momen- 
tary lordship of an old walled town we passed, which 
at dusk seemed more Gothic and Middle-Age than 
anything after Verona, with a fine church, and tur- 
rets and battlements in great plenty. What town 
it was, or what it had been doing there so many ages, 
I have never sought to know, and I should be sorry 
to learn anything about it. 

The next morning we began those researches 
for preliminary information concerning the Cimbri 
which turned out so vain. Indeed, as we drew near 



THE CIMBRI 219 

the lurking-places of that ancient people, all know- 
ledge relating to them diffused itself into shadowy- 
conjecture. The barber and the bookseller differed 
as to the best means of getting to the Sette Com- 
muni, and the caffetiere at whose place we took 
breakfast knew nothing at all of the road, except 
that it was up the mountains, and commanded views 
of scenery which, verily, it would not grieve us to 
see. As to the Cimbri, he only knew that they had 
their own language, which was yet harder than the 
German. The German was hard enough, but the 
Cimbrian ! Corpo ! 

At last, hearing of a famous cave there is at Oli- 
ero, a town some miles farther up the Brenta, we 
determined to go there, and it was a fortunate 
thought, for there we found a nobleman in charge 
of the cave who told us exactly how to reach the 
Sette Communi, You pass a bridge to get out of 
Bassano — a bridge which spans the crystal swift- 
ness of the Brenta, rushing down to the Adriatic 
from the feet of the Alps on the north, and full 
of voluble mills at Bassano. All along the road to 
Oliero was the finest mountain scenery, Brenta- 
washed, and picturesque with ever-changing lines. 
Maize grows in the bottom-lands, and tobacco, which 
is guarded in the fields by soldiers for the monopo- 
list government. Farmhouses dot the valley, and 
now and then we passed villages, abounding in 
blonde girls, so rare elsewhere in Italy, but here so 
numerous as to give Titian that type from which he 
painted. 



220 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

At Oliero we learned not only which was the 
road to the Sette Communi, but that we were in it, 
and it was settled that we should come the next day 
and continue in it, with the custodian of the cave, 
who for his breakfast and dinner, and what else we 
pleased, offered to accompany us. We were early 
at Oliero on the following morning, and found our 
friend in waiting ; he mounted beside our driver, 
and we rode up the Brenta to the town of Valstagna 
where our journey by wheels ended, and where we 
were to take mules for the mountain ascent. Our 
guide, Count Giovanni Bonato (for I may as well 
give him his title, though at this stage of our pro- 
gress we did not know into what patrician care we 
had fallen), had already told us what the charge for 
mules would be, but it was necessary to go through 
the ceremony of bargain with the muleteer before 
taking the beasts. Their owner was a Cimbrian, 
with a broad sheepish face, and a heavy, awkward 
accent of Italian which at once more marked his 
northern race, and made us feel comparatively se- 
cure from plunder in his hands. He had come down 
from the mountain top the night before, bringing 
three mules laden with charcoal, and he had waited 
for us till the morning. His beasts were furnished 
with comfortable pads, covered with linen, to ride 
upon, and with halters instead of bridles, and we 
were prayed to let them have their heads in the 
ascent, and not to try to guide them. 

The leisure of Valstagna (and in an Italian town 
nearly the whole population is at leisure) turned 



THE CIMBRI 221 

out to witness the departure of our expedition ; the 
pretty little blonde wife of our innkeeper, who was 
to get dinner ready against our return, held up her 
baby to wish us baon vtaggio, and waved us adieu 
with the infant as with a handkerchief ; the chickens 
and children scattered to right and left before our 
advance ; and with Count Giovanni going splendidly 
ahead on foot, and the Cimbrian bringing up the 
rear, we struck on the broad rocky valley between 
the heights, and presently began the ascent. It 
was a lovely morning ; the sun was on the heads of 
the hills, and the shadows clothed them like robes 
to their feet ; and I should be glad to feel here and 
now the sweetness, freshness, and purity of the 
mountain air, that seemed to bathe our souls in a 
childlike delight of life. A noisy brook gurgled 
through the valley ; the birds sang from the trees ; 
the Alps rose, crest on crest, around us ; and soft 
before us, among the bald peaks, showed the wooded 
height where the Cimbrian village of Fozza stood, 
with a white chapel gleaming from the heart of the 
lofty grove. Along the mountain sides the smoke 
curled from the lonely huts of shepherds, and now 
and then we came upon one of those melancholy 
refuges which are built in the hills for such travel- 
ers as are belated in their ways, or are overtaken 
there by storms. 

The road for the most part winds by the brink 
of precipices, — walled in with masonry of small 
stones, where Nature has not shored it up with vast 
monoliths, — and is paved with limestone. It is, of 



222 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

course, merely a mule-path, and it was curious to 
see, and thrilling to experience, how the mules, vain 
of the safety of their foothold, kept as near the 
border of the precipices as possible. For my own 
part, I abandoned to my beast the entire responsi- 
bility involved by this line of conduct ; let the halter 
hang loose upon his neck, and gave him no aid ex- 
cept such slight service as was occasionally to be 
rendered by shutting my eyes and holding my 
breath. The mule of the fairer traveler behind me 
was not only ambitious of peril like my own, but 
was envious of my beast's captaincy, and continu- 
ally tried to pass him on the outside of the path, 
to the great dismay of the gentle rider ; while half- 
suppressed wails of terror from the second lady in 
the train gave evidence of equal vanity and daring 
in her mule. Count Giovanni strode stolidly before, 
the Cimbrian came behind, and we had little coher- 
ent conversation until we stopped under a spreading 
haw-tree, half way up the mountain, to breathe our 
adventurous beasts. 

Here two of us dismounted, and while one of the 
ladies sketched the other in her novel attitude of 
cavalier, I listened to the talk of Count Giovanni 
and the Cimbrian. This Cimbrian's name in Italian 
was Lazzaretti, and in his own tongue Briick, which, 
pronouncing less regularly, we made Brick, in com- 
pliment to his qualities of good fellowship. His 
broad, honest visage was bordered by a hedge of 
red beard, and a light of dry humor shone upon it : 
he looked, we thought, like a Cornishman, and the 



THE CIMBRI 223 

contrast between him and the viso sciolto, pensieri 
stretti expression of Count Giovanni was curious 
enough. Concerning his people, he knew little ; 
but the Capo-gente of Fozza could tell me every- 
thing. Various traditions of their origin were be- 
lieved among them ; Brick himself held to one that 
they had first come from Denmark. 

There was a poor little house of refreshment be- 
side our spreading haw, and a withered old woman 
came out of it and refreshed us with clear spring 
water, and our guides and friends with some bitter 
berries of the mountain, which they admitted were 
unpleasant to the taste, but declared were very good 
for the blood. When they had sufficiently improved 
their blood, we mounted our mules again, and set 
out with the journey of an hour and a quarter still 
between us and Fozza. 

As we drew near the summit of the mountain our 
road grew more level, and instead of creeping along 
by the brinks of precipices, we began to wind 
through bits of meadow and pleasant valley walled 
in by lofty heights of rock. 

Though September was bland as June at the foot 
of the mountain, we found its breath harsh and cold 
on these heights ; and we remarked that though 
there were here and there breadths of wheat, the 
land was for the most part in sheep pasturage, and 
the grass looked poor and stinted of summer 
warmth. We met, at times, the shepherds, who 
seemed to be of Italian race, and were of the con- 
ventional type of shepherds, with regular faces, and 



224 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

two elaborate curls trained upon their cheeks, as 
shepherds are always represented in stone over the 
gates of villas. They bore staves, and their flocks 
went before them. Encountering us, they saluted 
us courteously, and when we had returned their 
greeting, they cried with one voice : " Ah, lords ! 
is not this a miserable country ? The people are 
poor and the air is cold. It is an unhappy land ! " 
And so passed on, profoundly sad ; but we could 
not help smiling at the vehement popular desire to 
have the region abused. We answered cheerfully 
that it was a lovely country. If the air was cold, 
it was also pure. 

We now drew in sight of Fozza, and, at the last 
moment, just before parting with Brick, we learned 
that he had passed a whole year in Venice, where 
he brought milk from the mainland and sold it in 
the city. He declared frankly that he counted that 
year worth all the other years of his life, and that he 
would never have come back to his native heights 
but that his father had died, and left his mother and 
young brothers helpless. He was an honest soul, 
and I gave him two florins, which I had tacitly ap- 
pointed him over and above the bargain, with some- 
thing for the small Brick-bats at home, whom he 
presently brought to kiss our hands at the house of 
the Capo-gente. 

The village of Fozza is built on a grassy, oblong 
plain on the crest of the mountain, which declines 
from it on three sides, and on the north rises high 
above it into the mists in bleaker and ruggeder 



THE CIMBRI 225 

acclivities. There are not more than thirty houses 
in the village, and I do not think it numbers more 
than a hundred and fifty souls, if so many. Indeed, 
it is one of the smallest of the Sette Communi, of 
which the capital, Asiago, contains some thousands 
of people, and lies not far from Vicenza. The poor 
Fozzatti had a church, however, in their village, in 
spite of its littleness, and they had just completed 
a fine new bell-tower, which the Capo-gente de- 
plored, and was proud of when I praised it. The 
church, like all the other edifices, was built of 
stone ; and the village at a little distance might look 
like broken crags of rock, so well it consorted with 
the harsh, crude nature about it. Meagre meadow- 
lands, pathetic with tufts of a certain pale blue, tear- 
ful flower, stretched about the village and south- 
ward as far as to that wooded point which had all 
day been our landmark in the ascent. 

Our train drew up at the humble door of the 
Capo-gente (in Fozza all doors are alike humble), 
and, leaving our mules, we entered by his wife's 
invitation, and seated ourselves near the welcome 
fire of the kitchen — welcome, though we knew 
that all the sunny Lombard plain below was purple 
with grapes and black with figs. Again came from 
the women here the wail of the shepherds : " Ah, 
lords ! is it not a miserable land ? " and I began to 
doubt whether the love which I had heard moun- 
taineers bore to their inclement heights was not alto- 
gether fabulous. They made haste to boil us some 
eggs, and set them before us with some unhappy 



226 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

wine, and while we were eating, the Capo-gente 
came in. 

He was a very well-mannered person, but had 
the bashfulness naturally resulting from his lonely 
life at that altitude, where contact with the world 
must be infrequent. His fellow-citizens seemed to 
regard him with a kind of affectionate deference, 
and some of them came in to hear him talk with 
the strangers. He stood till we prayed him to sit 
down, and he presently consented to take some 
wine with us. 

After all, however, he could not tell us much of 
his people which we had not heard before. A tradi- 
tion existed among them, he said, that their ances- 
tors had fled to these Alps from Marius, and that 
they had dwelt for a long time in the hollows and 
caves of the mountains, living and burying their 
dead in the same secret places. At what time they 
had been converted to Christianity he could not 
tell ; they had, up to the beginning of the present 
century, had little or no intercourse with the Italian 
population by which they were surrounded on all 
sides. Formerly, they did not intermarry with that 
race, and it was seldom that any Cimbrian knew its 
language. But now intermarriage is very frequent ; 
both Italian and Cimbrian are spoken in nearly all 
the families, and the Cimbrian is gradually falling 
into disuse. They still, however, have books of 
religious instruction in their ancient dialect, and 
until very lately the services of their church were 
performed in Cimbrian. 



THE CIMBRI 227 

I begged the Capo to show us some of their 
books, and he brought us two, — one a catechism 
for children, entitled " Dar Kloane Catechism vorn 
Beloseland vortraghet in z gaprecht von siben 
Komiinen, un vier Halghe Gasang. 1842. Padova." 
The other book it grieved me to see, for it proved 
that I was not the only one tempted in recent times 
to visit these ancient people, ambitious to bear to 
them the relation of discoverer, as it were. A High- 
Dutch Columbus, from Vienna, had been before me, 
and I could only come in for Amerigo Vespucci's 
tempered glory. This German savant had dwelt a 
week in these lonely places, patiently compiling a 
dictionary of their tongue, which, when it was 
printed, he had sent to the Capo. 

Concerning the present Cimbri, the Capo said 
that in his community they were chiefly hunters, 
wood-cutters, and charcoal-burners, and that they 
practiced their primitive crafts in those gloomier 
and wilder heights we saw to the northward, and 
descended to the towns of the plain to make sale of 
their fagots, charcoal, and wild-beast skins. In Asi- 
ago and the larger communities they were farmers 
and tradesmen like the Italians ; and the Capo be- 
lieved that the Cimbri, in all their villages, num- 
bered near ten thousand. He could tell me of no 
particular customs or usages, and believed they did 
not differ from the Italians now except in race and 
language. 1 They are, of course, subject to the Aus- 

1 The English traveler Rose, who (to my further discomfiture 
I find) visited Asiago in 18 17, mentions that the Cimbri have the 



228 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

trian government, but not so strictly as the Italians 
are ; and though they are taxed and made to do mil- 
itary service, they are otherwise left to regulate 
their affairs pretty much at their pleasure. 

The Capo ended his discourse with much polite 
regret that he had nothing more worthy to tell us ; 
and, as if to make us amends for having come so far 
to learn so little, he said there was a hermit living 
near, whom we might like to see, and sent his son 
to conduct us to the hermitage. It turned out to 
be the white object which we had seen gleaming 
in the wood on the mountain from so great distance 
below, and the wood turned out to be a pleasant 
beechen grove, in which we found the hermit cut- 
ting fagots. He was warmly dressed in clothes 
without rent, and wore the clerical knee-breeches. 
He saluted us with a cricket-like chirpiness of man- 
Celtic custom of waking the dead. "If a traveler dies by the 
way, they plant a cross upon the spot, and all who pass by cast a 
stone upon his cairn. Some go in certain seasons in the year to 
high places and woods, where it is supposed they worshiped their 
divinities, but the origin of the custom is forgot amongst them- 
selves." If a man dies by violence, they lay him out with his hat 
and shoes on, as if to give him the appearance of a wayfarer, and 
" symbolize one surprised in the great journey of life." A woman 
dying in childbed is dressed for the grave in her bridal ornaments. 
Mr. Rose is very scornful of the notion that these people are Cim- 
bri, and holds that it is ** more consonant to all the evidence of 
history to say, that the flux and reflux of Teutonic invaders at 
different periods deposited this backwater of barbarians " in the 
district they now inhabit. " The whole space, which in addition 
to the seven burghs contains twenty-four villages, is bounded by 
rivers, alps, and hills. Its most precise limits are the Brenta to 
the east, and the Astico to the west." 



THE CIMBRI 229 

ner, and was greatly amazed to hear that we had 
come all the way from America to visit him. His 
hermitage was built upon the side of a whitewashed 
chapel to St. Francis, and contained three or four 
little rooms or cupboards, in which the hermit dwelt 
and meditated. They opened into the chapel, of 
which the hermit had the care, and which he kept 
neat and clean like himself. He told us proudly 
that once a year, on the day of the titular saint, a 
priest came and said mass in that chapel, and it was 
easy to see that this was the great occasion of the 
old man's life. For forty years, he said, he had 
been devout ; and for twenty-five he had dwelt in 
this place, where the goodness of God and the 
charity of the poor people around had kept him 
from want. Altogether, he was a pleasant enough 
hermit, not in the least spiritual, but gentle, simple, 
and evidently sincere. We gave some small coins 
of silver to aid him to continue his life of devo- 
tion, and Count Giovanni bestowed some coppers 
with the stately blessing, " Iddio vi benedica, padre 
mio ! " 

So we left the hermitage, left Fozza, and started 
down the mountain on foot, for no one may ride 
down those steeps. Long before we reached the 
bottom, we had learned to loathe mountains and to 
long for dead levels during the rest of life. Yet the 
descent was picturesque, and in some things even 
more interesting than the ascent had been. We 
met more people ; now melancholy shepherds with 
their flocks ; now swineherds and swineherdesses 



230 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

with herds of wild black pigs of the Italian breed ; 
now men driving asses that brayed and woke long, 
loud, and most musical echoes in the hills; now whole 
peasant families driving cows, horses, and mules to 
the plains below. On the way down, fragments of 
autobiography began, with the opportunities of con- 
versation, to come from the Count Giovanni, and 
we learned that he was a private soldier at home 
on that pertnesso which the Austrian government 
frequently gives its less able-bodied men in times of 
peace. He had been at home some years, and did 
not expect to be again called into the service. He 
liked much better to be in charge of the cave at 
Oliero than to carry the musket, though he con- 
fessed that he liked to see the world, and that sol- 
diering brought one acquainted with many places. 
He had not many ideas, and the philosophy of his 
life chiefly regarded deportment toward strangers 
who visited the cave. He held it an error in most 
custodians to show discontent when travelers gave 
them little ; and he said that if he received never so 
much, he believed it wise not to betray exultation. 
" Always be contented, and nothing more/' said 
Count Giovanni. 

" It is what you people always promise before- 
hand, " I said, "when you bargain with strangers, to 
do them a certain service for what they please ; but 
afterward they must pay what you please or have 
trouble. I know you will not be content with what 
I give you/' 

" If I am not content," cried Count Giovanni, 
* call me the greatest ass in the world ! " 



THE CIMBRI 231 

And I am bound to say that, for all I could see 
through the mask of his face, he was satisfied with 
what I gave him, though it was not much. 

He had told us casually that he was nephew of 
a nobleman of a certain rich and ancient family in 
Venice, who sent him money while in the army, but 
this made no great impression on me ; and though 
I knew there was enough noble poverty in Italy to 
have given rise to the proverb, Un conte che non 
conta, non conta niente, yet I confess that it was 
with a shock of surprise I heard our guide and ser- 
vant saluted by a lounger in Valstagna with " Sior 
conte, servitor suo ! " I looked narrowly at him, 
but there was no ray of feeling or pride visible in 
his pale languid visage as he responded, " Buona 
sera, caro." 

Still, after that revelation we simple plebeians, 
who had been all day heaping shawls and guide- 
books upon Count Giovanni, demanding menial of- 
fices from him, and treating him with good-natured 
slight, felt uncomfortable in his presence, and wel- 
comed the appearance of our carriage with our 
driver, who, having started drunk from Bassano in 
the morning, had kept drunk all day at Valstagna, 
and who now drove us back wildly over the road, 
and almost made us sigh for the security of mules 
ambitious of the brinks of precipices. 



MINOR TRAVELS 











L PISA 

I AM afraid that the talk of the modern railway 
traveler, if he is honest, must be a great deal of 
the custodians, the vetturini, and the facchini, whose 
acquaintance constitutes his chief knowledge of the 
population among which he journeys. We do not 
nowadays carry letters recommending us to citizens 
of the different places. If we did, consider the 
calamity we should be to the be-traveled Italian com- 
munities we now bless ! No, we buy our through 
tickets, and we put up at the hotels praised in the 
hand-book, and are very glad of a little conversation 
with any native, however adulterated he be by con- 
tact with the world to which we belong. I do not 
blush to own that I love the whole rascal race which 
ministers to our curiosity and preys upon us, and I 
am not ashamed to have spoken so often in this book 



236 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

of the lowly and rapacious but interesting porters 
who opened to me the different gates of that great 
realm of wonders, Italy. I doubt if they can be 
much known to the dwellers in the land, though they 
are the intimates of all sojourners and passengers ; 
and if I have any regret in the matter, it is that I 
did not more diligently study them when I could. 

Among memorable custodians in Italy was one 
whom we saw at Pisa, where we stopped on our way 
from Leghorn after our accident in the Maremma, 
and spent an hour in viewing the Quattro Fabbriche. 
The beautiful old town, which every one knows from 
the report of travelers, one yet finds possessed of the 
incommunicable charm which keeps it forever novel 
to the visitor. Lying upon either side of the broad 
Arno, it mirrors in the flood architecture almost as 
fair and noble as that glassed in the Canalazzo, and 
its other streets seemed as tranquil as the canals of 
Venice. Those over which we drove, on the day 
of our visit, were paved with broad flagstones, and 
gave out scarcely a sound under our wheels. It 
was Sunday, and no one was to be seen. Yet the 
empty and silent city inspired us with no sense of 
desolation. The palaces were in perfect repair ; the 
pavements were clean ; behind those windows we 
felt that there must be a good deal of easy, comfort- 
able life. It is said that Pisa is one of the few 
places in Europe where the sweet, but timid spirit 
of Inexpensiveness — everywhere pursued by Rail- 
ways — still lingers, and that you find cheap apart- 
ments in those well-preserved old palaces. No 



PISA 237 

doubt it would be worth more to live in Pisa than 
it would cost, for the history of the place would 
alone be to any reasonable sojourner a perpetual 
recompense, and a princely income far exceeding 
his expenditure. To be sure, the Tower of Famine, 
with which we chiefly associate the name of Pisa, 
has been long razed to the ground, and built piece- 
meal into the neighboring palaces, but you may 
still visit the dead wall which hides from view the 
place where it stood ; and you may thence drive 
on, as we did, to the great Piazza where stands the 
most famous group of architecture in the world, 
after that of St. Mark's Place in Venice. There 
is the wonderful Leaning Tower, there is the old 
and beautiful Duomo, there is the noble Baptistery, 
there is the lovely Campo Santo, and there — some- 
where lurking in portal or behind pillar, and keep- 
ing out an eagle-eye for the marveling stranger — 
is the much-experienced cicerone who shows you 
through the edifices. Yours is the fourteen-thou- 
sandth American family to which he has had the 
honor of acting as guide, and he makes you feel an 
illogical satisfaction in thus becoming a contribu- 
tion to statistics. 

We entered the Duomo, in our new friend's cus- 
tody, and we saw the things which it was well to 
see. There was mass, or some other ceremony, 
transacting ; but as usual it was made as little ob- 
trusive as possible, and there was not much to 
weaken the sense of proprietorship with which trav- 
elers view obiects of interest. Then we ascended 



238 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

the Leaning Tower, skillfully preserving its equilib- 
rium as we went by an inclination of our persons 
in a direction opposed to the tower's inclination, but 
perhaps not receiving a full justification of the Cam- 
panile's appearance in pictures, till we stood at its 
base, and saw its vast bulk and height as it seemed 
to sway and threaten in the blue sky above our 
heads. There the sensation was too terrible for 
endurance, — even the architectural beauty of the 
tower could not save it from being monstrous to us, 
— and we were glad to hurry away from it to the 
serenity and solemn loveliness of the Campo Santo. 
Here are the frescoes painted five hundred years 
ago to be ruinous and ready against the time of your 
arrival in 1864, and you feel that you are the first to 
enjoy the joke of the Vergognosa, that cunning jade 
who peers through her fingers at the shameful con- 
dition of deboshed father Noah, and seems to wink 
one eye of wicked amusement at you. Turning after- 
ward to any book written about Italy during the 
time specified, you find your impression of exclusive 
possession of the frescoes erroneous, and your muse 
naturally despairs, where so many muses have labored 
in vain, to give a just idea of the Campo Santo. 
Yet it is most worthy celebration. Those exqui- 
sitely arched and traceried colonnades seem to grow 
like the slim cypresses out of the sainted earth of 
Jerusalem ; and those old paintings, made when Art 
was — if ever — a Soul, and not as now a mere 
Intelligence, enforce more effectively than their 
authors conceived the lessons of life and death ; for 



PISA 23g 

they are themselves becoming part of the trium- 
phant decay they represent. If it was awful once 
to look upon that strange scene where the gay lords 
and ladies of the chase come suddenly upon three 
dead men in their coffins, while the devoted hermits 
enjoy the peace of a dismal righteousness on a hill 
in the background, it is yet more tragic to behold it 
now when the dead men are hardly discernible in 
their coffins, and the hermits are but the vaguest 
shadows of gloomy bliss. Alas ! Death mocks 
even the homage done him by our poor fears and 
hopes : with dust he covers dust, and with decay 
he blots the image of decay. 

I assure the reader that I made none of these apt 
reflections in the Campo Santo at Pisa, but have 
written them out this morning in Cambridge because 
there happens to be an east wind blowing. No one 
could have been sad in the company of our cheerful 
and patient cicerone, who, although visibly anxious 
to get his fourteen-thousandth American family 
away, still would not go till he had shown us that 
monument to a dead enmity which hangs in the 
Campo Santo. This is the mighty chain which the 
Pisans, in their old wars with the Genoese, once 
stretched across the mouth of their harbor to pre- 
vent the entrance of the hostile galleys. The 
Genoese with no great trouble carried the chain 
away, and kept it ever afterward till i860, when 
Pisa was united to the kingdom of Italy. Then the 
trophy was restored to the Pisans, and with public 
rejoicings placed in the Campo Santo, an emblem 



240 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

of reconciliation and perpetual amity between an- 
cient foes. 1 It is not a very good world, — e pur si 
muove. 

The Baptistery stands but a step away from the 
Campo Santo, and our guide ushered us into it with 
the air of one who had till now held in reserve his 
great stroke and was ready to deliver it. Yet I think 
he waited till we had looked at some comparatively 
trifling sculptures by Nicolo Pisano before he raised 
his voice and uttered a melodious species of howl. 
While we stood in some amazement at this, the 
conscious structure of the dome caught the sound 
and prolonged it with a variety and sweetness of 
which I could not have dreamed. The man poured 
out in quick succession his musical wails, and then 
ceased, and a choir of heavenly echoes burst forth in 
response. There was a supernatural beauty in these 
harmonies of which I despair of giving any true idea : 
they were of such tender and exalted rapture that 
we might well have thought them the voices of 
young-eyed cherubim, singing as they passed through 
Paradise over that spot of earth where we stood. 
They seemed a celestial compassion that stooped 
and soothed, and rose again in lofty and solemn 
acclaim, leaving us poor and penitent and humbled. 

1 I read in Mr. Norton's Notes of Travel and Study in Italy, 
that he saw in the Campo Santo, as long ago as 1856, " the chains 
that marked the servitude of Pisa, now restored by Florence," and 
it is of course possible that our cicerone may have employed one 
of those chains for the different historical purpose I have men- 
tioned. It would be a thousand pities, I think, if a monument of 
that sort should be limited to the commemoration of one fact only. 



PISA 241 

We were long silent, and then broke forth with 
cries of admiration of which the marvelous echo 
made eloquence. 

" Did you ever," said the cicerone after we had 
left the building, "hear such music as that ? " 

"The papal choir does not equal it," we answered 
with one voice. 

The cicerone was not to be silenced even with 
such a tribute, and he went on : 

"Perhaps, as you are Americans, you know 
Moshu Feelmore, the President ? No ? Ah, what 
a fine man ! You saw that he had his heart actually 
in his hand ! Well, one day he said to me here, 
when I told him of the Baptistery echo, ' We have 
the finest echo in the world in the Hall of Con- 
gress/ I said nothing, but for answer I merely 
howled a little, — thus! Moshu Feelmore was 
convinced. Said he, ' There is no other echo in the 
world besides this. You are right/ I am unique," 
pursued the cicerone, "for making this echo. But,' 1 
he added with a sigh, "it has been my ruin. The 
English have put me in all the guide-books, and 
sometimes I have to howl twenty times a day. 
When our Victor Emanuel came here I showed him 
the church, the tower, and the Campo Santo. Says 
the king, ' Pf ui ! ' " — here the cicerone gave that 
sweeping outward motion with both hands by which 
Italians dismiss a trifling subject — " ' make me the 
echo ! ' I was forced," concluded the cicerone with 
a strong pretense of injury in his tone, "to howl 
half an hour without ceasing." 




II. TRIESTE 



IF you take the midnight steamer at Venice you 
reach Trieste by six o'clock in the morning, 
and the hills rise to meet you as you enter the 
broad bay dotted with the sail of fishing-craft. The 
hills are bald and bare, and you find, as you draw 
near, that the city lies at their feet under a veil of 
mist, or climbs earlier into view along their sides. 
The prospect is singularly devoid of gentle and 
pleasing features, and looking at those rugged ac- 



TRIESTE 243 

clivities, with their aspect of continual bleakness, 
you readily believe all the stories you have heard of 
that fierce wind called the Bora which sweeps from 
them through Trieste at certain seasons. While it 
blows, ladies walking near the quays are sometimes 
caught up and set afloat, involuntary Galateas, in 
the bay, and people keep indoors as much as pos- 
sible. But the Bora, though so sudden and so sav- 
age, does give warning of its rise, and the peasants 
avail themselves of this characteristic. They station 
a man on one of the mountain tops, and when he 
feels the first breath of the Bora, he sounds a horn, 
which is a signal for all within hearing to lay hold 
of something that cannot be blown away, and cling 
to it till the wind falls. This may happen in three 
days or in nine, according to the popular proverbs. 
" The spectacle of the sea," says Dall' Ongaro, in a 
note to one of his ballads, " while the Bora blows, 
is sublime, and when it ceases the prospect of the 
surrounding hills is delightful. The air, purified by 
the rapid current, clothes them with a rosy veil, and 
the temperature is instantly softened, even in the 
heart of winter/' 

The city itself, as you penetrate it, makes good 
with its stateliness and picturesqueness your loss 
through the grimness of its environs. It is in great 
part new, very clean, and full of the life and move- 
ment of a prosperous port ; but, better than this, so 
far as the mere sight-seer is concerned, it wins a 
peculiar charm from the many public staircases by 
which you ascend and descend its hillier quarters, 



244 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

and which are made of stone, and lightly railed and 
bal us traded with iron. 

Something of all this I noticed in my ride from 
the landing of the steamer to the house of friends 
in the suburbs, and there I grew better disposed 
toward the hills, which, as I strolled over them, I 
found dotted with lovely villas, and everywhere trav- 
ersed by perfectly kept carriage-roads, and easy and 
pleasant footpaths. It was in the spring-time, and 
the peach-trees and almond-trees hung full of blos- 
soms and bees, the lizards lay in the walks absorbing 
the vernal sunshine, the violets and cowslips sweet- 
ened all the grassy borders. The scene did not 
want a human interest, for the peasant girls were 
going to market at that hour, and I met them 
everywhere, bearing heavy burdens on their own 
heads, or hurrying forward with their wares on the 
backs of donkeys. They were as handsome as heart 
could wish, and they wore that Italian costume 
which is not to be seen anywhere in Italy except at 
Trieste and in the Roman and Neapolitan provinces, 
— a bright bodice and gown, with the headdress of 
dazzling white linen, square upon the crown, and 
dropping lightly to the shoulders. Later I saw 
these comely maidens crouching on the ground in 
the market-place, and selling their wares, with much 
glitter of eyes, teeth, and earrings, and a continual 
babble of bargaining. 

It seemed to me that the average of good looks 
was greater among the women of Trieste than 
among those of Venice, but that the instances of 



TRIESTE 245 

striking and exquisite beauty were rarer. At Trieste, 
too, the Italian type, so pure at Venice, is lost or 
continually modified by the mixed character of the 
population, which perhaps is most noticeable at the 
Merchants' Exchange. This is a vast edifice roofed 
with glass, where the traffickers of all races meet 
daily to gossip over the news and the prices. Here 
a Greek or Dalmat talks with an eager Italian or a 
slow, sure Englishman ; here the hated Austrian 
buttonholes the Venetian or the Magyar ; here the 
Jew meets the Gentile on common ground ; here 
Christianity encounters the hoary superstitions of 
the East, and makes a good thing out of them in 
cotton or grain. All costumes are seen here, and 
all tongues are heard, the native Triestines contrib- 
uting almost as much to the variety of parlance as 
the foreigners. "In regard to language,' ' says 
Cantu, " though the country is peopled by Slavo- 
nians, yet the Italian tongue is spreading into the 
remotest villages where a few years since it was not 
understood. In the city it is the common and famil- 
iar language ; the Slavonians of the North use the 
German for the language of ceremony ; those of the 
South, as well as the Israelites, the Italian ; while 
the Protestants use the German, the Greeks the 
Hellenic and Illyric, the employes of the civil courts 
the Italian or the German, the schools now German 
and now Italian, the bar and the pulpit Italian. 
Most of the inhabitants, indeed, are bi-lingual, and 
very many tri-lingual, without counting French, 
which is understood and spoken from infancy. 



246 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

Italian, German, and Greek are written, but the 
Slavonic little, this having remained in the condi- 
tion of a vulgar tongue. But it would be idle to 
distinguish the population according to language, 
for the son adopts a language different from the 
father's, and now prefers one language and now 
another; the women incline to the Italian; but 
those of the upper class prefer now German, now 
French, now English, as, from one decade to an- 
other, affairs, fashions, and fancies change. This 
in the salons ; in the squares and streets, the Vene- 
tian dialect is heard." 

And with the introduction of the Venetian dia- 
lect, Venetian discontent seems also to have crept 
in, and I once heard a Triestine declaim against the 
Imperial government quite in the manner of Ven- 
ice. It struck me that this desire for union with 
Italy, which he declared prevalent in Trieste must 
be of very recent growth, since even so late as 
1848 Trieste had refused to join Venice in the ex- 
pulsion of the Austrians. Indeed, the Triestines 
have fought the Venetians from the first ; they 
stole the Brides of Venice in one of their piratical 
cruises in the lagoons ; gave aid and comfort to 
those enemies of Venice, the Visconti, the Car- 
raras, and the Genoese; revolted from St. Mark 
whenever subjected to his banner, and finally, rather 
than remain under his sway, gave themselves five 
centuries ago to Austria. 

The objects of interest in Trieste are not many. 
There are remains of an attributive temple of Jupiter 



TRIESTE 247 

under the Duomo, and there is near at hand the 
Museum of Classical Antiquities founded in honor 
of Winckelmann, murdered at Trieste by Ancan- 
geli, who had seen the medals bestowed on the 
antiquary by Maria Theresa and believed him rich. 
There is also a scientific museum founded by the 
Archduke Maximilian, and, above all, there is the 
beautiful residence of that ill-starred prince, — the 
Miramare, where the half-crazed Empress of the 
Mexicans vainly waits her husband's return from 
the experiment of paternal government in the New 
World. It would be hard to tell how Art has 
charmed rock and wave at Miramare until the spur 
of one of those rugged Triestine hills, jutting into 
the sea, has been made the seat of ease and luxury, 
but the visitor is aware of the magic as soon as he 
passes the gate of the palace grounds. These are 
in great part perpendicular, and are over clambered 
with airy stairways climbing to pensile arbors. 
Where horizontal, they are diversified with mimic 
seas for swans to sail upon, and summer-houses for 
people to lounge in and look at the swans from. 
On the point of land farthest from the acclivity 
stands the Castle of Miramare, half at sea, and half 
adrift in the clouds above : — 

11 And fain it would stoop downward 
To the mirrored wave below ; 
And fain it would soar upward 
In the evening's crimson glow." 

I remember that a little yacht lay beside the pier 
at the castled foot, and lazily flapped its sail, while 



248 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

the sea beat inward with as languid a pulse. That 
was some years ago, before Mexico was dreamed of 
at Miramare : now, perchance, she who is one of the 
most unhappy among women looks down distraught 
from those high windows, and finds in the helpless 
sail and impassive wave the images of her baffled 
hope, and that immeasurable sea which gives back 
its mariners neither to love nor sorrow. I think 
though she be the wife and daughter of princes, we 
may pity this poor Empress at least as much as we 
pity the Mexicans to whom her dreams brought so 
many woes. 

It was the midnight following my visit to Mira- 
mare when the fiacre in which I had quitted my 
friend's house was drawn up by its greatly bewil- 
dered driver on the quay near the place where the 
steamer for Venice should be lying. There was no 
steamer for Venice to be seen. The driver swore 
a little in the polyglot profanities of his native city, 
and descending from his box, went and questioned 
different lights — blue lights, yellow lights, green 
lights — to be seen at different points. To a light, 
they were ignorant, though eloquent, and to pass the 
time, we drove up and down the quay, and stopped 
at the landings of all the steamers that touch at 
Trieste. It was a snug fiacre enough, but I did not 
care to spend the night in it, and I urged the driver 
to further inquiry. A wanderer whom we met de- 
clared that it was not the night for the Venice 
steamer; another admitted that it might be ; a third 
conversed with the driver in low tones, and then 



TRIESTE 249 

leaped upon the box. We drove rapidly away, and 
before I had, in view of this mysterious proceeding, 
composed a fitting paragraph for the Fatti Diversi 
of the " Osservatore Triestino," descriptive of the 
state in which the Guardie di Polizia should find 
me floating in the bay, exanimate and evidently the 
prey of a triste evenimento — the driver pulled up 
once more, and now beside a steamer. It was the 
steamer for Venice, he said, in precisely the tone 
which he would have used had he driven me directly 
to it without blundering. It was breathing heavily, 
and was just about to depart, but even in the hurry 
of getting on board, I could not help noticing that 
it seemed to have grown a great deal since I had 
last voyaged in it. There was not a soul to be seen 
except the mute steward who took my satchel, and 
guiding me below into an elegant saloon, instantly 
left me alone. Here again the steamer was vastly 
enlarged. These were not the narrow quarters of 
the Venice steamer, nor was this lamp, shedding a 
soft light on cushioned seats and paneled doors 
and wainscotings the sort of illumination usual in 
that humble craft. I rang the small silver bell on 
the long table, and the mute steward appeared. 

Was this the steamer for Venice ? 

Sicuro ! 

All that I could do in comment was to sit down ; 
and in the mean time the steamer trembled, groaned, 
choked, cleared its throat, and we were under way. 

"The other passengers have all gone to bed, I 
suppose," I argued acutely, seeing none of them. 



250 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

Nevertheless, I thought it odd, and it seemed a 
shrewd means of relief to ring the bell, and pretend- 
ing drowsiness, to ask the steward which was my 
stateroom. 

He replied with a curious smile that I could have 
any of them. Amazed, I yet selected a stateroom, 
and while the steward was gone for the sheets and 
pillow-cases, I occupied my time by opening the 
doors of all the other staterooms. They were 
empty. 

" Am I the only passenger ? " I asked, when he 
returned, with some anxiety. 

" Precisely/' he answered. 

I could not proceed and ask if he composed the 
entire crew — it seemed too fearfully probable that 
he did. 

I now suspected that I had taken passage with 
the Olandese Volante. There was nothing in the 
world for it, however, but to go to bed, and there, 
with the accession of a slight seasickness, my views 
of the situation underwent a total change. I had 
gone down into the Maelstrom with the Ancient 
Mariner — I was a Manuscript Found in a Bottle ! 

Coming to the surface about six o'clock a. m., I 
found a daylight as cheerful as need be upon the 
appointments of the elegant saloon, and upon the 
good-natured face of the steward when he brought 
me the caffi latte, and the buttered toast for my 
breakfast. He said " Servitor suo ! " in a loud and 
comfortable voice, and I perceived the absurdity of 
having thought that he was in any way related to 



! 



TRIESTE 251 

the Nightmare-Death-in-life-that-thicks-man's-blood- 
with-cold. 

"This is not the regular Venice steamer, I sup- 
pose," I remarked to the steward as he laid my 
breakfast in state upon the long table. 

No. Properly, no boat should have left for Venice 
last night, which was not one of the times of the tri- 
weekly departure. This was one of the steamers 
of the line between Trieste and Alexandria, and it 
was going at present to take on an extraordinary 
freight at Venice for Egypt. I had been permitted 
to come on board because my driver said I had a 
return ticket, and would go. 

Ascending to the deck I found nothing whatever 
mysterious in the management of the steamer. The 
captain met me with a bow in the gangway ; seamen 
were coiling wet ropes at different points, as they 
always are ; the mate was promenading the bridge, 
and taking the rainy weather as it came, with his 
oil-cloth coat and hat on. 

We were in sight of the breakwater outside Mala- 
mocco, and a pilot-boat was making us from the 
land. Even at this point the innumerable fortifica- 
tions of the Austrians began, and they multiplied 
as we drew near Venice, till we entered the lagoon, 
and found it a nest of fortresses one with another. 

Unhappily the day being rainy, Venice did not 
spring resplendent from the sea, as I had always 
read she would. She rose slowly and languidly 
from the water, — not like a queen, but like the 
gray, slovenly, bedrabbled, heart-broken old slave 
she really was. 








III. BASSANO 

I HAVE already told, in recounting the story of 
our visit to the Cimbri, how full of courtship we 
found the little city of Bassano on the evening of 
our arrival there. Bassano is the birthplace of the 
painter Jacopo da Ponte, who was one of the first 
Italian painters to treat scriptural story as accessory 
to mere landscape, and who had a peculiar fondness 



BASSANO 253 

for painting Entrances into the Ark, for in these he 
could indulge without stint the taste for pairing-off 
early acquired from observation of local customs in 
his native town. This was the theory offered by 
one who had imbibed the spirit of subtile specula- 
tion from Ruskin, and I think it reasonable. At 
least it does not conflict with the fact that there is 
at Bassano a most excellent gallery of paintings 
entirely devoted to the works of Jacopo da Ponte, 
and his four sons, who are here to be seen to better 
advantage than anywhere else. As few strangers 
visit Bassano, the gallery is little frequented. It is 
in charge of a very strict old man, who will not 
allow people to look at the pictures till he has shown 
them the adjoining cabinet of geological specimens. 
It is in vain that you assure him of your indiffer- 
ence to these scientific seccature ; he is deaf, and 
you are not suffered to escape a single fossil. He 
asked us a hundred questions, and understood no- 
thing in reply, insomuch that when he came to his 
last inquiry, " Have the Protestants the same God 
as the Catholics ? " we were rather glad that he 
should be obliged to settle the fact for himself. 

Underneath the gallery was a school of boys, 
whom as we entered we heard humming over the 
bitter honey which childhood is obliged to gather 
from the opening flowers of orthography. When 
we passed out, the master gave these poor busy bees 
an atom of holiday, and they all swarmed forth to- 
gether to look at the strangers. The teacher was a 
long, lank man, in a black threadbare coat, . and a 



254 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

skull-cap — exactly like the schoolmaster in " The 
Deserted Village.'* We made a pretense of asking 
him our way to somewhere, and went wrong, and 
came by accident upon a wide flat space, bare as a 
brick-yard, beside which was lettered on a fragment 
of the old city wall, " Giuoco di Palla." It was evi- 
dently the playground of the whole city, and it gave 
us a pleasanter idea of life in Bassano than we had 
yet conceived, to think of its entire population 
playing ball there in the spring afternoons. We 
respected Bassano as much for this as for her dili- 
gent remembrance of her illustrious dead, of whom 
she has very great numbers. It appeared to us 
that nearly every other house bore a tablet announ- 
cing that " Here was born," or " Here died," some 
great or good man of whom no one out of Bassano 
ever heard. There is enough celebrity in Bassano 
to supply the world ; but as laurel is a thing that 
grows anywhere, I covet rather from Bassajio the 
magnificent ivy that covers the portions of her an- 
cient wall yet standing. The wall, where visible, is 
seen to be of a pebbly rough-cast, but it is clad 
almost from the ground in glossy ivy, that glitters 
upon it like chain-mail upon the vast shoulders of 
some giant warrior. The moat beneath is turned 
into a lovely promenade bordered by quiet villas, 
with rococo shepherds and shepherdesses in marble 
on their gates ; where the wall is built to the verge 
of the high ground on which the city stands, there 
is a swift descent to the wide valley of the Brenta 
waving in corn and vines and tobacco. 



BASSANO 255 

We went up the Brenta one day as far as Oliero, 
to visit the famous cavern already mentioned, out 
of which, from the secret heart of the hill, gushes 
one of the foamy affluents of the river. It is 
reached by passing through a paper-mill, fed by the 
stream, and then through a sort of ante-grot whence 
stepping-stones are laid in the brawling current 
through a succession of natural compartments with 
dome-like roofs. From the hill overhead hang sta- 
lactites of all grotesque and fairy shapes, and the 
rock underfoot is embroidered with fantastic designs 
wrought by the water in the silence and darkness of 
the endless night. At a considerable distance from 
the mouth of the cavern is a wide lake, with a boat 
upon it, and voyaging to the centre of the pool your 
attention is drawn to the dome above you, which 
contracts into a shaft rising upward to a height as 
yet unmeasured and even unpierced by light. From 
somewhere in its mysterious ascent, an auroral boy, 
with a tallow candle, produces a so-called effect of 
sunrise, and sheds a sad, disheartening radiance on 
the lake and the cavern sides, which is to sunlight 
about as the blind creatures of subterranean waters 
are to those of waves that laugh and dance above 
ground. But all caverns are much alike in their 
depressing and gloomy influences, and since there 
is so great opportunity to be wretched on the sur- 
face of the earth, why do people visit them ? I do 
not know that this is more dispiriting or its stream 
more Stygian than another. 

The wicked memory of the Ecelini survives 



256 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

everywhere in this part of Italy, and near the en« 
trance of the Oliero grotto is a hollow in the hill 
something like the apsis of a church, which is popu- 
larly believed to have been the hiding-place of Ce- 
cilia da Baone, one of the many unhappy wives of 
one of the many miserable members of the Ecelino 
family. It is not quite clear when Cecilia should 
have employed this as a place of refuge, and it is 
certain that she was not the wife of Ecelino da Ro- 
mano, as the neighbors believe at Oliero, but of 
Ecelino il Monaco, his father ; yet since her name 
is associated with the grot, let us have her story, 
which is curiously illustrative of the life of the best 
society in Italy during the thirteenth century. She 
was the only daughter of the rich and potent lord, 
Manfredo, Count of Baone and Abano, who died 
leaving his heiress to the guardianship of Spinabello 
da Xendrico. When his ward reached womanhood, 
Spinabello cast about him to find a suitable husband 
for her, and it appeared to him that a match with 
the son of Tiso da Camposampiero promised the 
greatest advantages. Tiso, to whom he proposed 
the affair, was delighted, but desiring first to take 
counsel with his friends upon so important a matter, 
he confided it for advice to his brother-in-law and 
closest intimate, Ecelino Balbo. It had just hap- 
pened that Balbo's son, Ecelino il Monaco, was at 
that moment disengaged, having been recently 
divorced from his first wife, the lovely but light 
Speronella ; and Balbo falsely went to the greedy 
guardian of Cecilia, and offering him better terms 



BASSANO 257 

than he could hope for from Tiso, secured Cecilia 
for his son. At this treachery the Camposampieri 
were furious ; but they dissembled their anger till 
the moment of revenge arrived, when Cecilia's 
rejected suitor encountering her upon a journey 
beyond the protection of her husband, violently 
dishonored his successful rival. The unhappy lady 
returning to Ecelino at Bassano, recounted her 
wrong, and was with a horrible injustice repudiated 
and sent home, while her husband arranged schemes 
of vengeance in due time consummated. Cecilia 
next married a Venetian noble, and being in due 
time divorced, married yet again, and died the 
mother of a large family of children. 

This is a very old scandal, yet I think there was 
an habitut of the caff e in Bassano who could have 
given some of its particulars from personal recollec- 
tion. He was an old and smoothly shaven gentle- 
man, in a scrupulously white waistcoat, whom we 
saw every evening in a corner of the caffe playing 
solitaire. He talked with no one, saluted no one. 
He drank his glasses of water with anisette, and 
silently played solitaire. There is no good reason 
to doubt that he had been doing the same thing 
every evening for six hundred years. 




IV. POSSAGNO, CANOVA'S BIRTHPLACE 



IT did not take a long time to exhaust the inter- 
est of Bassano, but we were sorry to leave the 
place because of the excellence of the inn at which 
we tarried. It was called " II Mondo/' and it had 
everything in it that heart could wish. Our rooms 
were miracles of neatness and comfort ; they had the 
freshness, not.the rawness, of recent repair, and they 
opened into the dining-hall, where we were served 
with indescribable salads and risotti. During our 
sojourn we simply enjoyed the house ; when we were 
come away we wondered that so much perfection of 
hotel could exist in so small a town as Bassano. It 



POSSAGNO 259 

is one of the pleasures of byway travel in Italy, that 
you are everywhere introduced in character, that 
you become fictitious and play a part as in a novel. 
To this inn of The World, our driver had brought 
us with a clamor and rattle proportioned to the fee 
received from us, and when, in response to his 
haughty summons, the cameriere, who had been 
gossiping with the cook, threw open the kitchen 
door, and stood out to welcome us in a broad square 
of forth-streaming ruddy light, amid the lovely odors 
of broiling and roasting, our driver saluted him with, 
" Receive these gentle folks, and treat them to your 
very best. They are worthy of anything." This at 
once put us back several centuries, and we never 
ceased to be lords and ladies of the period of Don 
Quixote as long as we rested in that inn. 

It was a bright and breezy Sunday when we left 
"II Mondo," and gayly journeyed toward Treviso, 
intending to visit Possagno, the birthplace of Ca- 
nova, on our way. The road to the latter place 
passes through a beautiful country, that gently un- 
dulates on either hand till in the distance it rises 
into pleasant hills and green mountain heights. 
Possagno itself lies upon the brink of a declivity, 
down the side of which drops terrace after terrace, 
all planted with vines and figs and peaches, to a 
watercourse below. The ground on which the 
village is built, with its quaint and antiquated stone 
cottages, slopes gently northward, and on a little rise 
upon the left hand of us coming from Bassano we 
saw that stately edifice with which Canova has hon- 



260 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

ored his humble birthplace. It is a copy of the Pan- 
theon, and it cannot help being beautiful and impos- 
ing, but it would be utterly out of place in any other 
than an Italian village. Here, however, it consorted 
well enough with the lingering qualities of the old 
pagan civilization still perceptible in Italy. A sense 
of that past was so strong with us as we ascended 
the broad stairway leading up the slope from the 
village to the level on which the temple stands at 
the foot of a mountain, that we might well have 
believed we approached an altar devoted to the 
elder worship : through the open doorway and be- 
tween the columns of the portico we could see the 
priests moving to and fro, and the voice of their 
chanting came out to us like the sound of hymns to 
some of the deities long disowned ; and I remem- 
bered how Padre L had said to me in Venice, 

" Our blessed saints are only the old gods baptized 
and christened anew." Within as without, the tem- 
ple resembled the Pantheon, but it had little to show 
us. The niches designed by Canova for statues of 
the saints are empty yet ; but there are busts by 
his own hand of himself and his brother, the Bishop 
Canova. Among the people was the sculptor's 
niece, whom our guide pointed out to us, and who 
was evidently used to being looked at. She seemed 
not to dislike it, and stared back at us amiably 
enough, being a good-natured, plump, comely dark- 
faced lady of perhaps fifty years. 

Possagno is nothing if not Canova, and our guide 5 
a boy, knew all about him, — how, more especially, 



POSSAGNO 261 

he had first manifested his wonderful genius by 
modeling a group of sheep out of the dust of the 
highway, and how an Inglese happening along in 
his carriage, saw the boy's work and gave him a 
plateful of gold napoleons. I dare say this is as 
near the truth as most facts. And is it not better 
for Canova to have begun in this way than to have 
poorly picked up the rudiments of his art in the 
workshop of his father, a maker of altar-pieces and 
the like for country churches ? The Canova family 
has intermarried with the Venetian nobility, and 
will not credit those stories of Canova's beginnings 
which his townsmen so fondly cherish. I believe 
they would even distrust the butter lion with which 
the boy sculptor is said to have adorned the table 
of the noble Falier, and first won his notice. 

Besides the temple at Possagno, there is a very 
pretty gallery containing casts of all Canova's 
works. It is an interesting place, where Psyches 
and Cupids flutter, where Venuses present them- 
selves in every variety of attitude, where Sorrows 
sit upon hard, straight-backed classic chairs, and 
mourn in the society of faithful Storks ; where the 
Bereft of this century surround deathbeds in Greek 
costume appropriate to the scene ; where Muses and 
Graces sweetly pose themselves and insipidly smile, 
and where the Dancers and Passions, though na- 
keder, are no wickeder than the Saints and Virtues. 
In all, there are a hundred and ninety-five pieces in 
the gallery, and among the rest the statue named 
George Washington, which was sent to America in 



262 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

1820, and afterwards destroyed by fire in the Capi- 
tol. The figure is in a sitting posture ; naturally, it 
is in the dress of a Roman general ; and if it does 
not look much like George Washington, it does re- 
semble Julius Caesar. 

The custodian of the gallery had been Canova's 
body-servant, and he loved to talk of his master. 
He had so far imbibed the family spirit that he did 
not like to allow that Canova had ever been other 
than rich and grand, and he begged us not to be- 
lieve the idle stories of his first essays in art. He 
was delighted with our interest in the Caesarean 
Washington, and our pleasure in the whole gallery, 
which we viewed with the homage due to the man 
who had rescued the world from Swaggering in 
sculpture. When we were satisfied, he invited us, 
with his mistress's permission, into the house of the 
Canovas adjoining the gallery; and there we saw 
many paintings by the sculptor, — pausing longest 
in a lovely little room decorated after the Pompeian 
manner with scherzi in miniature panels represent- 
ing the jocose classic usualities : Cupids escaping 
from cages, and being sold from them, and playing 
many pranks and games with Nymphs and Graces. 

Then Canova was done, and Possagno was fin- 
ished ; and we resumed our way to Treviso, a town 
nearly as much porticoed as Padua, and having a 
memory and hardly any other consciousness. The 
Duomo, which is perhaps the ugliest duomo in the 
world, contains an "Annunciation" by Titian, one 
of his best paintings ; and in the Monte di Pieta is 



POSSAGNO 263 

the beautiful " Entombment " by which Giorgione 
is perhaps most worthily remembered. The church 
of San Nicolo is interesting from its quaint frescoes 
by the school of Giotto. At the railway station an 
admirable old man sells the most delicious white 
and purple grapes. 




V. COMO 



MY visit to Lake Como has become to me a 
dream of summer, — a vision that remains 
faded the whole year round, till the blazing heats of 
July bring out the sympathetic tints in which it was 
vividly painted. Then I behold myself again in 
burning Milan, amidst noises and fervors and bustle 
that seem intolerable after my first six months in 
tranquil, cool, mute Venice. Looking at the great 
white Cathedral, with its infinite pinnacles piercing 
the cloudless blue, and gathering the fierce sun 
upon it, I half expect to see the whole mass cal- 
cined by the heat, and crumbling, statue by statue, 
finial by finial, arch by arch, into a vast heap of lime 
on the Piazza, with a few charred English tourists 
blackening here and there upon the ruin, and con- 
tributing a smell of burnt leather and Scotch tweed 



COMO 265 

to the horror of the scene. All round Milan smokes 
the great Lombard plain, and to the north rises 
Monte Rosa, her dark head coifed with tantalizing 
snows as with a peasant's white linen kerchief. 
And I am walking out upon that fuming plain as 
far as to the Arco della Pace, on which the bronze 
horses may melt any minute ; or am I sweltering 
through the city's noonday streets, in search of 
Sant' Ambrogio, or the Cenacolo of Da Vinci, or 
what know I ? Coming back to our hotel, " Alia 
Bella Venezia," and greeted on entering by the im- 
mense fresco which covers one whole side of the 
court, it appeared to my friend and me no wonder 
that Garibaldi should look so longingly from the 
prow of a gondola toward the airy towers and bal- 
loon-like domes that swim above the unattainable 
lagoons of Venice, where the Austrian then lorded 
it in coolness and quietness, while hot, red-shirted 
Italy was shut out upon the dusty plains and stony 
hills. Our desire for water became insufferable ; 
we paid our modest bills, and at six o'clock we took 
the train for Como, where we arrived about the 
hour when Don Abbondio, walking down the lonely 
path with his book of devotions in his hand, gave 
himself to the Devil on meeting the bravos of Don 
Rodrigo. I counsel the reader to turn to " I Pro- 
messi Sposi," if he would know how all the lovely 
Como country looks at that hour. For me, the 
ride through the evening landscape, and the faint 
sentiment of pensiveness provoked by the smell of 
the ripening maize, which exhales the same sweet- 



266 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

ness on the way to Como that it does on any Ohio 
bottom-land, have given me an appetite, and I am 
to dine before wooing the descriptive Muse. 

After dinner, we find at the door of the hotel an 
English architect whom we know, and we take a 
boat together for a moonlight row upon the lake, 
and voyage far up the placid water through air 
that bathes our heated senses like dew. How far 
we have left Milan behind ! On the lake lies the 
moon, but the hills are held by mysterious shadows, 
which for the time are as substantial to us as the 
hills themselves. Hints of habitation appear in 
the twinkling lights along the water's edge, and we 
suspect an alabaster lamp in every casement, and 
in every invisible house a villa such as Claude Mel- 
notte described to Pauline, — and some one mouths 
that well-worn fustian. 

The town of Como lies, a swarm of lights, behind 
us ; the hills and shadows gloom around ; the lake 
is a sheet of tremulous silver. There is no telling 
how we get back to our hotel, or with what satis- 
fied hearts we fall asleep in our room there. The 
steamer starts for the head of the lake at eight 
o'clock in the morning, and we go on board at that 
hour. 

There is some pretense of shelter in the awning 
stretched over the after part of the boat ; but we 
do not feel the need of it in the fresh morning air, 
and we get as near the bow as possible, that we 
may be the very first to enjoy the famous beauty of 
the scenes opening before us. A few sails dot the 






C O M O 267 

water, and everywhere there are small, canopied 
rowboats, such as we went pleasuring in last night. 
We reach a bend in the lake, and all the roofs and 
towers of the city of Como pass from view, as if 
they had been so much architecture painted on a 
scene and shifted out of sight at a theatre. But 
other roofs and towers constantly succeed them, 
not less lovely and picturesque than they, with 
every curve of the many-curving lake. We advance 
over charming expanses of water lying between 
lofty hills ; and as the lake is narrow, the voyage is 
like that of a winding river. Wherever the hills do 
not descend sheer into Como, a pretty town nestles 
on the brink, or, if not a town, then a villa, or else a 
cottage, if there is room for nothing more. Many 
little towns climb the heights half way, and where 
the hills are green and cultivated in vines or olives, 
peasants' houses scale them to the crest. They 
grow loftier and loftier as we leave our starting- 
place farther behind, and as we draw near Colico 
they wear light wreaths of cloud and snow. So 
cool a breeze has drawn down between them all the 
way that we fancy it to have come from them till 
we stop at Colico, and find that, but for the efforts 
of our honest engine, sweating and toiling in the 
dark below, we should have had no current of air. 
A burning calm is in the atmosphere, and on the 
broad, flat valley, — out of which a marshy stream 
oozes into the lake, — and on the snow-crowned hills 
upon the left, and on the dirty village of Colico 
upon the right, and on the indolent beggars waiting 



268 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

to welcome us, and sunning their goitres at the 
landing. 

The name Colico, indeed, might be literally taken 
in English as descriptive of the local insalubrity. 
The place was once large, but it has fallen away 
much from sickness, and we found a bill posted in 
its public places inviting emigrants to America on 
the part of a German steamship company. And 
yet Colico, though undeniably hot, and openly 
dirty, and tacitly unhealthy, had merits, though the 
dinner we got there was not among its virtues. It 
had an accessible country about it ; that is, its 
woods and fields were not impenetrably walled in 
from the vagabond foot ; and after we had dined 
we went and lay down under some greenly waving 
trees beside a field of corn, and heard the plumed 
and panoplied maize talking to itself of its kindred 
in America. It always has a welcome for tourists 
of our nation where it finds us in Italy ; and some- 
times its sympathy, expressed in a rustling and 
clashing of its long green blades, or in its strong 
sweet perfume, has, as already hinted, made me 
homesick, though I have been uniformly unaffected 
by potato-patches and tobacco-fields. 

From where we lay beside the cornfield, we could 
see, through the twinkling leaves and the twinkling 
atmosphere, the great hills across the lake, taking 
their afternoon naps, with their clouds drawn like 
handkerchiefs over their heads. It was very hot, 
and the red and purple ooze of the unwholesome 
river below "burnt like a witch's oils ■'* It was in- 



COMO 269 

deed but a fevered joy we snatched from Nature 
there ; and I am afraid that we got nothing more 
comfortable from sentiment, when, rising, we wan* 
dered off through the unguarded fields toward a 
ruined tower on a hill. It must have been a relic of 
feudal times, and I could easily believe it had been 
the hold of one of those wicked lords who used to 
rule in the terror of the people beside peaceful and 
happy Como. But the life, good or bad, was utterly 
gone out of it now, and what was left of the tower 
was a burden to the sense. A few scrawny black- 
berries and other brambles grew out of its fallen 
stones ; harsh, dust-dry mosses painted its weather- 
worn walls with their blanched gray and yellow. 
From its foot, looking out over the valley, we saw 
the road to the Spliigen Pass lying white-hot in the 
valley ; and while we looked, the diligence appeared, 
and dashed through the dust that rose like a flame 
before. After that it was a relief to stroll in dirty 
byways, past cottages of saffron peasants, and poor 
stony fields that begrudged them a scanty vegeta- 
tion, back to the steamer blistering in the sun. 

Now indeed we were glad of the awning, under 
which a silent crowd of people with sunburnt faces 
waited for the departure of the boat. The breeze 
rose again as the engine resumed its unappreciated 
labors, and, with our head toward Como, we pushed 
out into the lake. The company on board was such 
as might be expected. There was a German land- 
scape-painter, with three heart' s-friends beside him ; 
there were some German ladies; there were the 



270 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

unfailing Americans and the unfailing Englishman ; 
there were some French people ; there were Italians 
from the meridional provinces, dark, thin, and en- 
thusiastic, with fat silent wives, and a rhythmical 
speech ; there were Milanese with their families, out 
for a holiday, — round-bodied men, with blunt square 
features, and hair and vowels clipped surprisingly 
short ; there was a young girl whose face was of the 
exact type affected in rococo sculpture, and at whom 
one gazed without being able to decide whether she 
was a nymph descended from a villa gate, or a saint 
come from under a broken arch in a church. 









STOPPING AT VICENZA, VERONA, 
AND PARMA 



>x 




STOPPING AT VICENZA, VERONA, AND PARMA 



IT was after sunset when we arrived in the birth- 
place of Palladio, which we found a fair city in 
the lap of caressing hills. There are pretty villas 
upon these slopes, and an abundance of shaded walks 
and drives about the houses which were pointed out 
to us, by the boy who carried our light luggage from 
the railway station, as the property of rich citizens 
"but little less than lords" in quality. A lovely 
grove lay between the station and the city, and our 
guide not only took us voluntarily by the longest 
route through this, but after reaching the streets led 
us by labyrinthine ways to the hotel, in order, he 
afterwards confessed, to show us the city. He was 



274 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

a poet, though in that lowly walk of life, and he had 
done well. No other moment of our stay would 
have served us so well for a first general impression 
of Vicenza as that twilight hour. In its uncertain 
glimmer we seemed to get quite back to the dawn 
of feudal civilization, when Theodoric founded the 
great Basilica of the city ; and as we stood before 
the famous Clock Tower, which rises light and 
straight as a mast eighty-two metres into the air 
from a base of seven metres, the wavering obscurity 
enhanced the effect by half concealing the tower's 
crest, and letting it soar endlessly upward in the 
fancy. The Basilica is greatly restored by Palladio, 
and the cold hand of that friend of virtuous poverty 
in architecture lies heavy upon his native city in 
many places. Yet there is still a great deal of Lom- 
bardic architecture in Vicenza ; and we walked 
through one street of palaces in which Venetian 
Gothic prevailed, so that it seemed as if the Grand 
Canal had but just shrunk away from their bases. 
When we threw open our window at the hotel, we 
found that it overlooked one of the city gates, from 
which rose a Ghibelline tower with a great bulging 
cornice, full of the beauty and memory of times long 
before Palladio. 

They were rather troublous times, and not to be 
recalled here in all their circumstance ; but I think it 
due to Vicenza, which is now little spoken of, even 
in Italy, and is scarcely known in America, where 
her straw-braid is bought for that of Leghorn, to 
remind the reader that the city was for a long time 



VICENZA, VERONA, PARMA 275 

a republic of very warlike stomach. Before she ar- 
rived at that state, however, she had undergone a 
great variety of fortunes. The Gauls founded the 
city (as I learn from " The Chronicles of Vicenza," 
by Battista Pagliarino, published at Vicenza in 1563) 
when Gideon was Judge in Israel, and were driven 
out by the Romans some centuries later. As a 
matter of course, Vicenza was sacked by Attila and 
conquered by Alboin ; after which she was ruled by 
some lords of her own, until she was made an im- 
perial city by Henry I. Then she had a govern- 
ment more or less republican in form till Frederick 
Barbarossa burnt her, and "wrapped her in ashes," 
and gave her to his vicar Ecelino da Romano, who 
"held her in cruel tyranny" from 1236 to 1259. 
The Paduans next ruled her forty years, and the 
Veronese seventy-seven, and the Milanese seventeen 
years ; then she reposed in the arms of the Venetian 
Republic till these fell weak and helpless from all 
the Venetian possessions at the threat of Napoleon. 
Vicenza belonged again to Venice during the brief 
Republic of 1848, but the most memorable battle 
of that heroic but unhappy epoch gave her back to 
Austria. Now at last, and for the first time, she is 
Italian. 
Vicenza is 

" Of kindred that have greatly expiated 
And greatly wept," 

and but that I so long fought against Ecelino da 
Romano, and the imperial interest in Italy, I could 
readily forgive her all her past errors. To us of the 



276 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

Lombard League, it was grievous that she should 
remain so doggishly faithful to her tyrant ; though 
it is to be granted that perhaps fear had as much 
to do with her devotion as favor. The defense of 
1848 was greatly to her honor, and she took an 
active part in that demonstration against the Aus- 
trians which endured from 1859 till 1866. 

Of the demonstration we travelers saw an amus- 
ing phase at the opera which we attended the even- 
ing of our arrival in Vicenza. " Nabucodonosor " 
was the piece to be given in the new open-air the- 
atre outside the city walls, whither we walked under 
the starlight. It was a pretty structure of fresh 
white stucco, oval in form, with some graceful 
architectural pretensions without, and within very 
charmingly galleried ; while overhead it was roofed 
with a blue dome set with such starry mosaic as 
never covered temple or theatre since they used to 
leave their houses of play and worship open to the 
Attic skies. The old Hebrew story had, on this 
stage brought so near to Nature, effects seldom 
known to opera, and the 'scene evoked from far-off 
days the awful interest of the Bible histories, — the 
vague, unfigured oriental splendor — the desert — 
the captive people by the waters of the river of 
Babylon — the shadow and mystery of the prophe- 
cies. When the Hebrews, chained and toiling on 
the banks of the Euphrates, lifted their voices in 
lamentation, the sublime music so transfigured the 
commonplace words that they meant all deep and 
unutterable affliction, and for a while swept away 



VICENZA, VERONA, PARMA 277 

whatever was false and tawdry in the show, and 
thrilled our hearts with a rapture rarely felt. Yet, 
as but a moment before we had laughed to see 
Nebuchadnezzar's crown shot off his head by a 
squib visibly directed from the side scenes, — at the 
point when, according to the libretto, " the thunder 
roars, and a bolt descends upon the head of the 
king," — so but a moment after some new absurdity 
marred the illusion, and we began to look about the 
theatre at the audience. We then beheld that act 
of dimostrazione which I have mentioned. In one 
of the few boxes sat a young and very beautiful 
woman in a dress of white, with a fan which she 
kept in constant movement. It was red on one 
side, and green on the other, and gave, with the 
white dress, the forbidden Italian colors, while, 
looked at alone, it was innocent of offense. I do 
not think a soul in the theatre was ignorant of the 
demonstration. A satisfied consciousness was re- 
flected from the faces of the Italians, and I saw two 
Austrian officers exchange looks of good-natured 
intelligence, after a glance at the fair patriot. I 
wonder what those poor people do, now they are 
free, and deprived of the sweet, perilous luxury of 
defying their tyrants by constant acts of subtle dis- 
dain ? Life in Venetia must be very dull : no more 
explosion of pasteboard petards ; no more treason 
in bouquets ; no more stealthy inscriptions on the 
walls — it must be insufferably dull. Ebbene y pazi- 
enza ! Perhaps Victor Emanuel may betray them 
yet. 



278 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

A spirit of lawlessness, indeed, seemed to per- 
vade the whole audience in the theatre that night at 
Vicenza, and to extend to the ministers of the law 
themselves. There were large placards everywhere 
posted, notifying the people that it was forbidden to 
smoke in the theatre, and that smokers were liable 
to expulsion ; but except for ourselves, and the fair 
patriot in the box, I think everybody there was 
smoking, and the policemen set the example of an- 
archy by smoking the longest and worst cigars of 
all. I am sure that the captive Hebrews all held 
lighted cigarettes behind their backs, and that 
Nebuchadnezzar, condemned to the grass of the 
field, conscientiously gave himself up to the Virginia 
weed behind the scenes. 

Before I fell asleep that night, the moon rose over 
the top of the feudal tower in front of our hotel, 
and produced some very pretty effects with the 
battlements. Early in the morning a regiment of 
Croats marched through the gate below the tower, 
their band playing " The Young Recruit." These 
advantages of situation were not charged in our bill ; 
but, even if they had been, I should still advise my 
reader to go, when in Vicenza, if he loves a pleasant 
landlord and a good dinner, to the Hotel de la Ville, 
which he will find almost at his sole disposition for 
however long time he may stay. His meals will be 
served him in a vast dining-hall, as bare as a barn 
or a palace, but for the pleasant, absurd old paint- 
ings on the wall, representing, as I suppose, Cleo- 
patra applying the Asp, Susannah and the Elders, 



VICENZA, VERONA, PARMA 279 

the Roman Lucrezia, and other moral and appetiz- 
ing histories. I take it there is a quaint side-table 
or two lost midway of the wall, and that an old 
woodcut picture of the Most Noble City of Venice 
hangs over each. I know that there is a screen at 
one end of the apartment behind which the landlord 
invisibly assumes the head waiter ; and I suspect that 
at the moment of sitting down at meat, you hear 
two Englishmen talking — as they pass along the 
neighboring corridor — of wine, in dissatisfied chest- 
tones. This hotel is of course built round a court, 
in which there is a stable and — exposed to the 
weather — a diligence, and two or three carriages 
and a driver, and an ostler chewing straw, and a 
pump and a grape-vine. Why the hotel, therefore, 
does not smell like a stable, from garret to cellar, I 
am utterly at a loss to know. I state the fact that 
it does not, and that every other hotel in Italy does 
smell of stable as if cattle had been immemorially 
pastured in its halls, and horses housed in its bed- 
chambers — or as if its only guests were centaurs 
on their travels. 

From the Museo Civico, whither we repaired first 
in the morning, and where there are some beautiful 
Montagnas, and an assortment of good and bad 
works by other masters, we went to the Campo 
Santo, which is worthy to be seen, if only because 
of the beautiful Laschi monument by Vela. It is 
nothing more than a very simple tomb, at the door 
of which stands a figure in flowing drapery, with 
folded hands and uplifted eyes in an attitude exqui- 



280 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

sitely expressive of grief. The figure is said to be 
the portrait of the widow of him within the tomb, 
and the face is very beautiful. We asked if the 
widow was still young, and the custodian answered 
us in terms that ought to endear him to all women, 
if not to our whole mortal race, — " Oh, quite young, 
yet. She is perhaps fifty years old." 

After the Campo Santo one ought to go to that 
theatre which Palladio built for the representation 
of classic tragedy, and which tries to be a perfect 
reproduction of the Greek theatre. Alfieri is the 
only poet of modern times whose works have been 
judged worthy of this stage, and no drama has 
been given on it since 1857, when the " CEdipus 
Tyrannus " of Sophocles was played. We found it 
very silent and dusty, and were much sadder as we 
walked through its gayly frescoed, desolate ante- 
rooms than we had been in the Campo Santo. 
Here used to sit, at coffee and bassett, the merry 
people who owned the now empty seats of the 
theatre, — lord, and lady, and abbe, — who affected 
to be entertained by the scenes upon the stage. 
Upon my word, I should like to know what has be- 
come, in the other world, of those poor pleasurers 
of the past whose memory makes one so sad upon 
the scenes of their enjoyment here! I suppose 
they have something quite as unreal, yonder, to 
satisfy them as they had on earth, and that they 
still play at happiness in the old rococo way, though 
it is hard to conceive of any fiction outside of Italy 
so perfect and so entirely suited to their unreality 



VICENZA, VERONA, PARMA 281 

as this classic theatre. It is a Greek theatre, for 
Greek tragedies ; but it could never have been for 
popular amusement, and it was not open to the air, 
though it had a sky skillfully painted in the centre 
of the roof. The proscenium is a Greek fagade, in 
three stories, such as never was seen in Greece ; 
and the architecture of the three streets running 
back from the proscenium, and forming the one un- 
changeable scene of all the dramas, is — like the 
statues in the niches and on the gallery inclosing 
the auditorium — Greek in the most fashionable 
Vicentine taste. It must have been but an oper- 
atic chorus that sang in the semicircular space just 
below the stage and in front of the audience. 
Admit and forget these small blemishes and aberra- 
tions, however, and what a marvelous thing Palla- 
dio's theatre is ! The sky above the stage is a 
wonderful trick, and those three streets — one in 
the centre and serving as entrance for the royal 
persons of the drama, one at the right for the 
nobles, and one at the left for the citizens — pre- 
sent unsurpassed effects of illusion. They are not 
painted, but modeled in stucco. In perspective 
they seem each half a mile long, but entering them 
you find that they run back from the proscenium 
only some fifteen feet, the fronts of the houses and 
the statues upon them decreasing in recession with 
a well-ordered abruptness. The semicircular gallery 
above the auditorium is of stone, and forty statues 
of marble crown its colonnade, or occupy niches 
between the columns. 



282 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

ii 

It was curious to pass, with the impression left 
by this costly and ingenious toy upon our minds, at 
once to the Arena in Verona, which, next to the 
Coliseum, has, of all the works bequeathed us by 
the ancient Roman world, the greatest claim upon 
the wonder and imagination. Indeed, it makes 
even a stronger appeal. We know who built the 
Coliseum, but in its unstoried origin, the Veronese 
Arena has the mystery of the Pyramids. Was its 
founder Augustus, or Vitellius, or Antoninus, or 
Maximian, or the Republic of Verona ? Nothing is 
certain but that it was conceived and reared by 
some mighty prince or people, and that it yet re- 
mains in such perfection that the great shows of 
two thousand years ago might take place in it to- 
day. It is so suggestive of the fierce and splendid 
spectacles of Roman times that the ring left by a 
modern circus on the arena, and absurdly dwarfed 
by the vast space of the oval, had an impertinence 
which we hotly resented, looking down on it from 
the highest grade of the interior. It then lay fifty 
feet below us, in the middle of an ellipse five hun- 
dred feet in length and four hundred in breadth, 
and capable of holding fifty thousand spectators. 
The seats that the multitudes pressed of old are 
perfect yet ; scarce a stone has been removed from 
the interior ; the aedile and the prefect might take 
their places again in the balustraded tribunes above 
the great entrance at either end of the arena, and 



VICENZA, VERONA, PARMA 283 

scarcely see that they were changed. Nay, the 
victims and the gladiators might return to the cells 
below the seats of the people, and not know they 
had left them for a day ; the wild beasts might leap 
into the arena from dens as secure and strong as 
when first built. The ruin within seems only to 
begin with the aqueduct, which was used to flood 
the arena for the naval shows, but which is now 
choked with the dust of ages. Without, however, 
is plain enough the doom which is written against 
all the work of human hands, and which, unknown 
of the builders, is among the memorable things 
placed in the corner-stone of every edifice. Of the 
outer wall that rose high over the highest seats of 
the amphitheatre, and encircled it with stately 
corridors, giving it vaster amplitude and grace, the 
earthquake of six centuries ago spared only a frag- 
ment that now threatens above one of the narrow 
Veronese streets. Blacksmiths, wagon-makers, and 
workers in clangorous metals have made shops of 
the lower corridors of the old arena, and it is friends 
and neighbors with the modern life about it, as 
such things usually are in Italy. Fortunately for 
the stranger, the Piazza Bra flanks it on one hand, 
and across this it has a magnificent approach. It 
is not less happy in being little known to senti- 
ment, and the traveler who visits it by moonlight, 
has a full sense of grandeur and pathos, without 
any of the sheepishness attending homage to that 
battered old coquette, the Coliseum, which so many 
emotional people have sighed over, kissing and 
afterwards telling. 



284 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

But he who would know the innocent charm of a 
ruin as yet almost wholly uncourted by travel, must 
go to the Roman theatre in Verona. It is not a 
favorite of the hand-books ; and we were decided 
to see it chiefly by a visit to the Museum, where, 
besides an admirable gallery of paintings, there is a 
most interesting collection of antiques in bronze and 
marble found in excavating the theatre. The ancient 
edifice had been completely buried, and a quarter of 
the town was built over it, as Portici is built over 
Herculaneum, and on the very top stood a Jesuit 
convent. One day, some children, playing in the 
garden of one of the shabby houses, suddenly van- 
ished from sight. Their mother ran like one mad 
(I am telling the story in the words of the peasant 
who related it to me) to the spot where they had 
last been seen, and fell herself into an opening of 
the earth there. The outcry raised by these un- 
fortunates brought a number of men to their aid, 
and in digging to get them out, an old marble stair- 
way was discovered. This was about twenty-five 
years ago. A certain gentleman named Monga 
owned the land, and he immediately began to make 
excavations. He was a rich man, but considered 
rather whimsical (if my peasant represented the 
opinion of his neighbors), and as the excavation ate 
a great deal of money (mangiava molti soldi), his 
sons discontinued the work after his death, and 
nothing has been done for some time, now. The 
peasant in charge was not a person of imaginative 
mind, though he said the theatre (supposed to have 



VICENZA, VERONA, PARMA 285 

been built in the time of Augustus) was completed 
two thousand years before Christ. He had a fine 
conventional admiration of the work, which he ex- 
pressed at regular intervals, by stopping short in his 
course, waving both hands over the ruins, and cry- 
ing in a sepulchral voice, "QilclV opera ! " 

We crossed three or four streets, and entered at 
several different gates, in order to see the uncovered 
parts of the work, which could have been but a small 
proportion of the whole. The excavation has been 
carried down thirty and forty feet below the founda- 
tions of the modern houses, revealing the stone seats 
of the auditorium, the corridors beneath them, and 
the canals and other apparatus for naval shows, as 
in the great Arena. These works are even more 
stupendous than those of the Arena, for in many 
cases they are not constructed, but hewn out of the 
living rock, so that in this light the theatre is a 
gigantic sculpture. Below all are cut channels to 
collect and carry off the water of the springs in 
which the rock abounds. The depth of one of these 
channels near the Jesuit convent must be fifty feet 
below the present surface. Only in one place does 
the ancient edifice rise near the top of the ground, 
and there is uncovered the arched front of what was 
once a family-box at the theatre, with the owner's 
name graven upon the arch. Many poor little 
houses have of course been demolished to carry on 
the excavations, and to the walls that joined them 
cling memorials of the simple life that once inhab- 
ited them. To one of the buildings hung a mel- 



286 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

ancholy fireplace left blackened with smoke, and 
battered with use, but witnessing that it had once 
been the heart of a home. It was far more touch- 
ing than anything in the elder ruin ; and I think 
nothing could have so vividly expressed the differ- 
ence which, in spite of all the resemblances notice- 
able in Italy, exists between the ancient and modern 
civilization, as that family-box at the theatre and 
this simple fireside. 

I do not now remember what fortunate chance it 
was that discovered to us the house of the Capu- 
lets, and I incline to believe that we gravitated to- 
ward it by operation of well-known natural principles 
which bring travelers acquainted with improbabili- 
ties wherever they go. We found it a very old and 
time-worn edifice, built round an ample court, and 
we knew it, as we had been told we should, by the 
cap carven in stone above the interior of the grand 
portal. The family, anciently one of the principal 
of Verona, has fallen from much of its former great- 
ness. On the occasion of our visit, Juliet, very 
dowdily dressed, looked down from the top of a 
long, dirty staircase which descended into the court, 
and seemed interested to see us ; while her mother 
caressed with one hand a large yellow mastiff, and 
distracted it from its first impulse to fly upon us poor 
children of sentiment. There was a great deal of 
stable litter, and many empty carts standing about 
in the court ; and if I might hazard the opinion 
formed upon these and other appearances, I should 
say that old Capulet had now gone to keeping a 



VICENZA, VERONA, PARMA 287 

hotel, united with the retail liquor business, both in 
a small way. 

Nothing could be more natural, after seeing the 
house of the Capulets, than a wish to see Juliet's 
Tomb, which is visited by all strangers, and is the 
common property of the hand-books. It formerly 
stood in a garden, where, up to the beginning of 
this century, it served, says my " Viaggio in Italia," 
" for the basest uses," — just as the sacred prison of 
Tasso was used for a charcoal bin. We found the 
sarcophagus under a shed in one corner of the gar- 
den of the Orfanotrofio delle Franceschine, and had 
to confess to each other that it looked like a horse- 
trough roughly hewn out of stone. The garden, 
said the boy in charge of the moving monument, had 
been the burial-place of the Capulets, and this tomb 
being found in the middle of the garden, was easily 
recognized as that of Juliet. Its genuineness, as 
well as its employment in the ruse of the lovers, 
was proved beyond cavil by a slight hollow cut for 
the head to rest in, and a hole at the foot "to 
breathe through," as the boy said. Does not the 
fact that this relic has to be protected from the de- 
predations of travelers, who could otherwise carry it 
away piecemeal, speak eloquently of a large amount 
of vulgar and rapacious innocence drifting about the 
world ? 

It is well to see even such idle and foolish curi- 
osities, however, in a city like Verona, for the mere 
going to and fro in search of them through her 
streets is full of instruction and delight. To my 



288 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

mind, no city has a fairer place than she that sits 
beside the eager Adige, and breathes the keen air 
of mountains white with snows in winter, green and 
purple with vineyards in summer, and forever rich 
with marble. Around Verona stretch those gar- 
dened plains of Lombardy, on which Nature, who 
dotes on Italy, and seems but a stepmother to all 
transalpine lands, has lavished every gift of beauty 
and fertility. Within the city's walls, what store 
of art and history ! Her market-places have been 
the scenes of a thousand tragic or ridiculous 
dramas ; her narrow streets are ballads and legends 
full of love-making and murder ; the empty, grass- 
grown piazzas before her churches are tales that 
are told of municipal and ecclesiastical splendor. 
Her nobles sleep in marble tombs so beautiful that 
the dust in them ought to be envied by living men 
in Verona ; her lords lie in perpetual state in the 
heart of the city, in magnificent sepulchres of such 
grace and opulence, that, unless a language be in- 
vented full of lance-headed characters, and Gothic 
vagaries of arch and finial, flower and fruit, bird 
and beast, they can never be described. Sacred be 
their rest from pen of mine, Verona ! Nay, while I 
would fain bring the whole city before my reader's 
fancy, I am loath and afraid to touch anything in it 
with my poor art : either the tawny river, spanned 
with many beautiful bridges, and murmurous with 
mills afloat and turned by the rapid current ; or the 
thoroughfares with their passengers and bright 
shops and caffes ; or the grim old feudal towers ; 



VICENZA, VERONA, PARMA 289 

or the age-embrowned palaces, eloquent in their 
haughty strength of the times when they were 
family fortresses ; or the churches with the red pil- 
lars of their porticoes resting upon the backs of 
eagle-headed lions ; or even the white-coated garri- 
son (now there no more), with its heavy-footed rank 
and file, its resplendent officers, its bristling fortifi- 
cations, its horses and artillery, crowding the piaz- 
zas of churches turned into barracks. Verona is 
an almost purely Gothic city in her architecture, 
and her churches are more worthy to be seen than 
any others in North Italy, outside of Venice. San 
Zenone, with the bronzes on its doors representing 
in the rudeness of the first period of art the inci- 
dents of the Old Testament and the miracles of the 
saints — with the allegorical sculptures surrounding 
the interior and exterior of the portico, and illus- 
trating, among other things, the creation of Eve 
with absolute literalness — with its fine solemn 
crypt in which the dust of the titular saint lies en- 
tombed — with its minute windows, and its massive 
columns sustaining the roof upon capitals of every 
bizarre and fantastic device — is doubtless most 
abundant in that Gothic spirit, now grotesque and 
now earnest, which somewhere appears in all the 
churches of Verona ; which has carven upon the 
facade of the Duomo the statues of Orlando and 
Oliviero, heroes of romance, and near them has 
placed the scandalous figure of a pig in a monk's 
robe and cowl, with a breviary in his paw ; which 
has reared the exquisite monument of Guglielmo 



2qo ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

da Castelbarco before the church of St. Anastasia, 
and has produced the tombs of the Scaligeri before 
the chapel of Santa Maria Antica. 

I have already pledged myself not to attempt any 
description of these tombs, and shall not fall now. 
But I bought in the English tongue, as written 
at Verona, some " Notices " kept for sale by the 
sacristan, " of the Ancient Churg of Our Lady, and 
of the Tombs of the most illustrious Family Della- 
Scala," and from these I think it no dereliction to 
quote verbatim. First is the tomb of Can Fran- 
cesco, who was " surnamed the Great by reason 
of his valor." "With him the Great Alighieri and 
other exiles took refuge. We see his figure ex- 
tended upon a bed, and above his statue on horse- 
bac with the vizor down, and his crest falling 
behind his shoulders, his horse covered with mail. 
The columns and capitals are wonderful." " Within 
the Cemetery to the right leaning against the walls 
of the church is the tomb of John Scaliger." " In 
the side of this tomb near the wall of Sacristy, you 
see the urn that encloses the ashes of Martin I.," 
"who was traitorously killed on the 17th of October 
1277, by Scaramello of the Scaramelli, who wished to 
revenge the honor of a young lady of his family." 
" The Mausoleum that is in the side facing the Place 
encloses the Martin II. 's ashes. . . . This building is 
sumptuous and wonderful because it stands on four 
columns, each of which has an architrave of nine 
feet. On the beams stands a very large square of 
marble that forms the floor, on which stands the urn 



VICENZA, VERONA, PARMA 291 

of the Defunct. Four other columns support the 
vault that covers the urn ; and the rest is adorned 
by facts of Old Testament. Upon the Summit is 
the equestrian statue as large as life. ,, Of " Can 
Signorius," whose tomb is the most splendid of all, 
the "Notices" say: "He spent two thousand 
florins of gold, in order to prepare his own sepul- 
chre while he was yet alive, and to surpass the 
magnificence of his predecessors. The monument 
is as magnificent as the contracted space allows. 
Six columns support the floor of marble on which 
it stands covered with figures. Six other columns 
support the top, on that is the Scaliger's statues. 
. . . The monument is surrounded by an enclosure 
of red marble, with six pillars, on which are square 
capitols with armed Saints. The rails of iron with 
the Arms of the Scala are worked with a beauty 
wonderful for that age," or, I may add, for any age. 
These "rails" are an exquisite network of iron 
wrought by hand, with an art emulous of that of 
Nicolo Caparra at Florence. The chief device em- 
ployed is a ladder {scala) constantly repeated in the 
centres of quatre-foils ; and the whole fabric is still 
so flexible and perfect, after the lapse of centuries, 
that the net may be shaken throughout by a touch. 
Four other tombs of the Scaligeri are here, among 
which the " Notices " particularly mention that of 
Alboin della Scala : "He was one of the Ghibelline 
party, as the arms on his urn schew, that is a stair- 
case risen by an eagle — wherefore Dante said, In 
Stella Scala porta il santo Uccelhr 



292 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

I should have been glad to meet the author of 
these delightful histories, but in his absence we 
fared well enough with the sacristan. When, a few 
hours before we left Verona, we came for a last look 
at the beautiful sepulchres, he recognized us, and 
seeing a sketch-book in the party, he invited us 
within the inclosure again, and then ran and fetched 
chairs for us to sit upon — nay, even placed chairs 
for us to rest our feet on. Winning and exuberant 
courtesy of the Italian race ! If I had never ac- 
knowledged it before, I must do homage to it now, 
remembering the sweetness of the sacristans and 
custodians of Verona. They were all men of the 
most sympathetic natures. He at San Zenone 
seemed never to have met with real friends till we 
expressed pleasure in the magnificent Mantegna, 
which is the pride of his church. " What coloring! " 
he cried, and then triumphantly took us into the 
crypt : " What a magnificent crypt ! What works 
they executed in those days, there ! " At San 
Giorgio Maggiore, where there are a Tintoretto and 
a Veronese, and four horrible swindling big pictures 
by Romanino, I discovered to my great dismay that 
I had in my pocket but five soldi, which I offered 
with much abasement and many apologies to the 
sacristan ; but he received them as if they had 
been so many napoleons, prayed me not to speak of 
embarrassment, and declared that his labors in our 
behalf had been nothing but pleasure. At Santa 
Maria in Organo, where are the wonderful intagli 
of Fra Giovanni da Verona, the sacristan fully 



VICENZA, VERONA, PARMA 293 

shared our sorrow that the best pictures could not 
be unveiled, as it was Holy Week. He was also 
moved at the gradual decay of the intagli, and led 
us to believe that, to a man of so much sensibility, 
the general ruinous state of the church was an in- 
expressible affliction ; and we rejoiced for his sake 
that it should possess at least one piece of art in 
perfect repair. This was a modern work, that day 
exposed for the first time, and it represented in a 
group of wooden figures The Death of St. Joseph. 
The Virgin and Christ supported the dying saint 
on either hand ; and as the whole was vividly col- 
ored, and rays of glory in pink and yellow gauze 
descended upon Joseph's head, nothing could have 
been more impressive. 

in 

Parma is laid out with a regularity which may 
be called characteristic of the great ducal cities of 
Italy, and which it fully shares with Mantua, Fer- 
rara, and Bologna. The signorial cities, Verona, 
Vicenza, Padua, and Treviso, are far more pictur- 
esque, and Parma excels only in .the number and 
beauty of her fountains. It is a city of gloomy 
aspect, says Valery, who possibly entered it in a 
pensive frame of mind, for its sadness did not im- 
press us. We had just come from Modena, where 
the badness of our hotel enveloped the city in an 
atmosphere of profound melancholy. In fact, it 
will not do to trust to travelers in anything. I, for 
example, have just now spoken of the many beauti- 



294 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

ful fountains in Parma because I think it right to 
uphold the statement of M. Richard's hand-book ; 
but I only remember seeing one fountain, passably- 
handsome, there. My Lord Corke, who was at 
Parma in 1754, says nothing of fountains, and 
Richard Lasells, Gent., who was there a century 
earlier, merely speaks of the fountains in the 
Duke's gardens, which, together with his Grace's 
" wild beasts " and " exquisite coaches/' and " ad- 
.mirable Theater to exhibit Operas in," "the Domo, 
whose Cupola was painted by the rare hand of Cor- 
reggio," and the church of the Capuchins, where 
Alexander Farnese is buried, were "the Chief 
things to be seen in Parma " at that day. 

The wild beasts have long ago run away with the 
exquisite coaches, but the other wonders named by 
Master Lasells are still extant in Parma, together 
with some things he does not name. Our minds, in 
going thither, were mainly bent upon Correggio and 
his works, and while our dinner was cooking at the 
admirable Albergo della Posta, we went off to feast 
upon the perennial Hash of Frogs in the dome of the 
Cathedral. This is one of the finest Gothic churches 
in Italy, and vividly recalls Verona, while it has a 
quite unique and most beautiful feature in the three 
light-columned galleries, that traversed the facade 
one above another. Close at hand stands the ancient 
Baptistery, hardly less peculiar and beautiful ; but, 
after all, it is the work of the great painter which 
gives the temple its chief right to wonder and 
reverence. We found the fresco, of course, much 



VICENZA, VERONA, PARMA 295 

wasted, and at first glance, before the innumerable 
arms and legs had time to order and attribute them- 
selves to their respective bodies, we felt the justice 
of the undying spite which called this divinest of 
frescoes a guazzetto di rane. But in another mo- 
ment it appeared to us the most sublime conception 
of the Assumption ever painted, and we did not find 
Caracci's praise too warm where he says : " And I 
still remain stupefied with the sight of so grand a 
work — everything so well conceived — so well 
seen from below — with so much severity, yet with 
so much judgment and so much grace ; with a col- 
oring which is of very flesh." The height of the 
fresco above the floor of the church is so vast that 
it might well appear like a heavenly scene to the 
reeling sense of the spectator. Brain, nerve, and 
muscle were strained to utter exhaustion in a very 
few minutes, and we came away with our admiration 
only half satisfied, and resolved to ascend the cupola 
next day, and see the fresco on something like 
equal terms. In one sort we did thus approach it ; 
and as we looked at the gracious floating figures of 
the heavenly company through the apertures of the 
dome, they did seem to adopt us and make us part 
of the painting. But the tremendous depth, over 
which they drifted so lightly, it dizzied us to look 
into ; and I am not certain that I should counsel 
travelers to repeat our experience. Where still per- 
fect, the fresco can only gain from close inspection, 
— it is painted with such exquisite and jealous per- 
fection, — yet the whole effect is now better from 



296 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

below, for the decay is less apparent ; and besides, 
life is short, and the stairway by which one ascends 
to the dome is in every way too exigent. It is with 
the most astounding sense of contrast that you pass 
from the Assumption to the contemplation of that 
other famous roof frescoed by Correggio, in the 
Monastero di San Paolo. You might almost touch 
the ceiling with your hand, it hovers so low with its 
counterfeit of vine-clambered trellis-work, and its 
pretty boys looking roguishly through the embow- 
ering leaves. It is altogether the loveliest room 
in the world ; and if the Diana in her car on the 
chimney is truly a portrait of the abbess for whom 
the chamber was decorated, she was altogether 
worthy of it, and one is glad to think of her enjoy- 
ing life in the fashion amiably permitted to nuns 
in the fifteenth century. What curious scenes the 
gayety of this little chamber conjures up, and what 
a vivid comment it is upon the age and people that 
produced it ! This is one of the things that makes 
a single hour of travel worth whole years of study, 
and which casts its light upon all future reading. 
Here, no doubt, the sweet little abbess, with the 
noblest and prettiest of her nuns about her, re- 
ceived the polite world, and made a cheerful thing 
of devotion, while all over transalpine Europe the 
sour-hearted Reformers were destroying pleasant 
monasteries like this. The light-hearted lady-nuns 
and their gentlemen friends looked on heresy as a 
deadly sin, and they had little reason to regard it 
with favor. It certainly made life harder for them 



VICENZA, VERONA, PARMA 297 

in time, for it made reform within the Church as 
well as without, so that at last the lovely Chamber 
of St. Paul was closed against the public for more 
than two centuries. 

All Parma is full of Correggio, as Venice is of 
Titian and Tintoretto, as Naples of Spagnoletto, as 
Mantua of Giulio Romano, as Vicenza of Palladio, 
as Bassano of Da Ponte, as Bologna of Guido Reni. 
I have elsewhere noticed how ineffaceably and ex- 
clusively the manner of the masters seems to have 
stamped itself upon the art of the cities where they 
severally wrought, — how at Parma Correggio yet 
lives in all the sketchy mouths of all the pictures 
painted there since his time. One might almost 
believe, hearing the Parmesans talk, that his manner 
had infected their dialect, and that they fashioned 
their lazy, incomplete utterance with the careless 
lips of his nymphs and angels. They almost entirely 
suppress the last syllable of their words, and not with 
a quick precision, as people do in Venice or Milan, 
but with an ineffable languor, as if language were 
not worth the effort of enunciation ; while they rise 
and lapse several times in each sentence, and sink 
so sweetly and sadly away upon the closing vocable 
that the listener can scarcely repress his tears. In 
this melancholy rhythm, one of the citizens re- 
counted to me the whole story of the assassination 
j of the last Duke of Parma in 1850 ; and left me as 
softly moved as if I had been listening to a tale of 
hapless love. Yet it was an ugly story, and after 
the enchantment of the recital passed away, I per- 



298 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

ceived that when the Duke was killed justice was 
done on cne of the maddest and wickedest tyrants 
that ever harassed an unhappy city. 

The Parmesans remember Maria Louisa, Napo- 
leon's wife, with pleasant enough feelings, and she 
seems to have been good to them after the manner 
of sovereigns, enriching their city with art, and 
beautifying it in many ways, besides doing works of 
private charity and beneficence. Her daughter by 
a second marriage, the Countess Sanvitali, still 
lives in Parma ; and in one of the halls of the 
academy of Fine Arts the Duchess herself survives 
in the marble of Canova. It was she who caused 
the two great pictures of Correggio, the St. Jerome 
and the Madonna della Scodella, to be placed alone 
in separate apartments hung with silk, in which the 
painter's initial A is endlessly interwoven. "The 
Night/' to which the St. Jerome is "The Day/' is 
in the Gallery at Dresden, but Parma could have 
kept nothing more representative of her great 
painter's power than this " Day." It is " the bridal 
of the earth and sky," and all sweetness, brightness, 
and tender shadow are in it. Many other excellent 
works of Correggio, Caracci, Parmigianino, and mas- 
ters of different schools are in this gallery, but it is 
the good fortune of travelers, who have to see so 
much, that the memory of the very best alone dis- 
tinctly remains. Nay, in the presence of prime 
beauty nothing else exists, and we found that the 
church of the Steccata, where Parmigianino's sub- 
lime " Moses breaking the Tables of the Law " is 



VICENZA, VERONA, PARMA 299 

visible in the midst of a multitude of other figures 
on the vault, really contained nothing at last but 
that august presence. 

The great Farnese Theatre was, as we have seen, 
admired by Lasells ; but Lord Corke found it a 
" useless structure " though immense. "The same 
spirit that raised the Colossus at Rhodes/' he says, 
"raised the theatre at Parma; that insatiable spirit 
and lust of Fame which would brave the Almighty 
by fixing eternity to the name of a perishable being." 
If it was indeed this spirit, I am bound to say that 
it did not build so wisely at Parma as at Rhodes. 
The playhouse that Ranuzio I. constructed in 1628, 
to do honor to Cosmo II. de' Medici (pausing at 
Parma on his way to visit the tomb of San Carlo 
Borromeo), and that for a century afterward was the 
scene of the most brilliant spectacles in the world, 
is now one of the dismalest and dustiest of ruins. 
This Theatritm orbis miracitlum was built and orna- 
mented with the most perishable materials, and even 
its size has shrunken as the imaginations of men 
have contracted under the strong light of later days. 
When it was first opened, it was believed to hold 
fourteen thousand spectators ; at a later fete it held 
only ten thousand ; the last published description 
fixes its capacity at five thousand ; and it is certain 
that for many and many a year it has held only the 
stray tourists who have looked in upon its desolation. 
The gay paintings hang in shreds and tatters from 
the roof; dust is thick upon the seats and in the 
boxes, and on the leads that line the space once 



300 



ITALIAN JOURNEYS 



flooded for naval games. The poor plaster statues 
stand naked and forlorn amid the ruin of which they 
are part ; and the great stage, from which the cur- 
tain has rotted away, yawns dark and empty before 
the empty auditorium. 



DUCAL MANTUA 




DUCAL MANTUA 



IN that desperate depth of Hell where Dante 
beholds the Diviners doomed to pace with back- 
ward-twisted faces, and turn forever on the past the 
rainy eyes once bent too daringly on the future, the 
sweet guide of the Tuscan poet points out among 
the damned the daughter of a Theban king, and 
discourses to his charge : — 

Manto was she : through many lands she went 
Seeking, and paused where I was born, at last. 
Therefore I choose thou be on me intent 

A little. When from life her father passed, 
And they of Bacchus' city became slaves, 
Long time about the world the daughter cast. 

Up in fair Italy is a lake that laves 

The feet of Alps that lock in Germany : 
Benaco called. . . . 

And Peschiera in strong harness sits 

»To front the Brescians and the Bergamasques, 
Where one down-curving shore the other meets. 



304 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

There all the gathered waters outward flow 
That may not in Benaco's bosom rest, 
And down through pastures green a river go. 

As far as to Governo, where, its quest 

Ended at last, it falls into the Po. 

But far it has not sought before a plain 

It finds and floods, out-creeping wide and slow 

To be the steaming summer's offense and bane. 
Here passing by, the fierce, unfriendly maid 
Saw land in the middle of the sullen main, 

Wild and unpeopled, and here, unafraid 
Of human neighborhood, she made her lair, 
Rested, and with her menials wrought her trade, 
1 And lived, and left her empty body there. 

Then the sparse people that were scattered near 
Gathered upon that island, everywhere 

Compassed about with swamps and kept from fear. 
They built their city above the witch's grave, 
And for her sake that first made dwelling there 

The name of Mantua to their city gave. 

To this account of the first settlement of Mantua 
Virgil adds a warning to his charge to distrust all 
other histories of the city's foundation ; and Dante 
is so thoroughly persuaded of its truth, that he de- 
clares all other histories shall be to him as so many 
lifeless embers. Nevertheless, divers chroniclers of 
Mantua reject the tradition here given as fabulous ; 
and the caref ullest and most ruthless of these traces 
the city's origin, not to the unfriendly maid, but to 
the Etruscan King Ocno, fixing the precise date of 
its foundation at thirty years before the Trojan war, 
one thousand five hundred and thirty-nine years 
after the creation of the world, three hundred years 
before Rome, and nine hundred and fifteen years 



DUCAL MANTUA 305 

after the flood, while Abimelech was judge in Israel. 
"And whoever," says the compiler of the "Flower 
of the Mantuan Chroniclers " (it is a very dry and 
musty flower, indeed), citing doughty authorities 
for all his facts and figures, — " whoever wishes to 
understand this more curiously, let him read the 
said authors, and he will be satisfied. " 

But I am as little disposed to unsettle the reader's 
faith in the Virgilian tradition, as to part with my 
own ; and I therefore uncandidly hold back the 
names of the authorities cited. This tradition was 
in fact the only thing concerning Mantuan history 
present to my thoughts as I rode toward the city, 
one afternoon of a pleasant Lombard spring ; and 
when I came in sight of the ancient hold of sorcery, 
with the languid waters of its lagoons lying sick at 
its feet, I recognized at least the topographical truth 
of Virgil's description. But old and mighty walls 
now surround the spot which Manto found sterile 
and lonely in the heart of the swamp formed by the 
Mincio, no longer Benaco ; and the dust of the witch 
is multitudinously hidden under the edifices of a 
city whose mighty domes, towers, and spires make 
its approach one of the stateliest in the world. It 
is a prospect on which you may dwell long as you 
draw toward the city, for the road from the railway 
station winds through some two miles of flat meadow- 
land before it reaches the gate of the stronghold 
which the Italians call the first hope of the winner 
of the land, and the last hope of the loser of Italy. 
Indeed, there is no haste in any of the means of 



306 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

access to Mantua. It lies scarce forty miles south 
of Verona, and you are three hours in journeying 
this distance in the placid railway train, — a distance 
which Romeo, returning to Verona from his exile 
in Mantua, no doubt traveled in less time. There 
is abundant leisure to study the scenery on the way; 
but it scarcely repays the perusal, for it lacks the 
beauty of the usual Lombard landscape. The soil 
is red, stony, and sterile ; the orchard trees are scant 
and slender, and not wedded with the caressing 
vines which elsewhere in North Italy garland hap- 
pier trees and stretch gracefully from trunk to 
trunk. Especially the landscape looks sad and 
shabby about the little village of Villafranca, where, 
in 1864, the dejected prospect seemed incapable 
of a smile even in spring ; as if it had lost all hope 
and cheerfulness since the peace was made which 
confirmed Venetia to the alien. It said as plainly 
as real estate could express the national sentiment, 
" Come si fa ? Ci vuol pazienza ! " and crept sullenly 
out of sight, as our pensive train resumed its medi- 
tative progress. No doubt this poor landscape was 
imbued, in its dull, earthy way, with a feeling that 
the coming of Garibaldi would irrigate and fertilize 
it into a paradise ; as at Venice the gondoliers be- 
lieved that his army would bring in its train cheap 
wine and hordes of rich and helpless Englishmen 
bent on perpetual tours of the Grand Canal without 
agreement as to price. 

But within and without Mantua was a strong 
argument against possibility of change in the polit- 



DUCAL MANTUA 307 

ical condition of this part of Italy. Compassed 
about by the corruption of the swamps and the 
sluggish breadth of the river, the city is no less 
mighty in her artificial defenses than in this natural 
strength of her position ; and the Croats of her gar- 
rison were as frequent in her sad, handsome streets 
as the priests in Rome. Three lakes secure her 
from approach upon the east, north, and south ; on 
the west is a vast intrenched camp, which can be 
flooded at pleasure from one of the lakes ; while the 
water runs three fathoms deep at the feet of the 
solid brick walls all round the city. There are five 
gates giving access by drawbridges from the town 
to the fortressed posts on every side, and command- 
ing with their guns the roads that lead to them. 
The outlying forts, with the citadel, are four in 
number, and are each capable of holding from two 
to three thousand men. The intrenched camp, for 
cavalry and artillery, and the barracks of the city 
itself, can receive a garrison of from thirty to forty 
thousand men ; and the measureless depths of the 
air are full of the fever that fights in defense of 
Mantua, and serves with equal zeal whoever is mas- 
ter of the place, let him be French, Italian, or Aus- 
trian, so only that he have an unacclimated enemy 
before him. 

The place seemed sunken, that dull April evening 
of our visit, into an abiding lethargy ; as if perfect 
repose, and oblivion from the many troubled past, 
— from the renown of all former famine, fire, in- 
trigue, slaughter, and sack, — were to be preferred 



308 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

by the ghost of a once populous and haughty capi- 
tal to the most splendid memories of national life. 
Certainly, the phantom of bygone Mantuan great- 
ness did not haunt the idle tourists who strolled 
through her wide streets, enjoying their quiet 
beauty and regularity, and finding them, despite 
their empty, melancholy air, full of something that 
reminded of home. Coming from a land where 
there is a vast deal of length, breadth, and rectitude 
in streets, as well as human nature, they could not, 
of course, feel that wonder in the Mantuan avenues 
which inspired a Venetian ambassador, two centu- 
ries since, to write the Serenest Senate in praise of 
their marvelous extent and straightness ; but they 
were still conscious of a certain expansive difference 
from Gothic Verona and narrow Venice. The win- 
dows of the ground floors were grated to the prison- 
like effect common throughout Italy ; but people 
evidently lived upon the ground floors, and at many 
of the iron-barred windows fair young prisoners sat 
and looked out upon the streets, or laughed and 
chatted together. About the open doorways, more- 
over, people lounged gossiping ; and the interiors of 
the entry-halls, as they appeared to the passing 
glance, were clean, and had not that forbidding, 
inhospitable air characteristic of most house-en- 
trances in North Italy. But sculptured Venice and 
Verona had unfitted the travelers for pleasure in 
the stucco of Mantua ; and they had an immense 
scorn for the large and beautiful palaces of which 
the before-quoted ambassador speaks, because they 



DUCAL MANTUA 309 

found them faced with cunningly moulded plaster 
instead of carven stone. Nevertheless, they could 
Hot help a kind of half-tender respect for the old 
town. It shares the domestic character of its scenes 
with the other ducal cities, Modena, Parma, and 
Ferrara ; and this character is perhaps proper to 
all long and intensely municipalized communities. 
But Mantua has a ghostly calm wholly its own ; and 
this was not in the least broken that evening by 
chatters at thresholds, and pretty laughters at 
grated windows. It was very, very quiet. Perhaps 
half a score of carriages rumbled by us in our long 
walk, and we met some scattered promenaders. 
But for the most part the streets were quite empty ; 
and even in the chief piazza, where there was still 
some belated show of buying and selling, and about 
the doors of the caff es, where there was a good deal 
of languid loafing, there was no indecency of noise 
or bustle. There were visibly few people in the 
place, and it was in decay ; but it was not squalid 
in its lapse. The streets were scrupulously neat 
and clean, and the stuccoed houses were all painted 
of that pale saffron hue which gives such unques- 
tionable respectability to New England towns. Be- 
fore we returned to our lodgings, Mantua had turned 
into twilight ; and we walked homeward through a 
placid and dignified gloom, nowhere broken by the 
flare of gas, and only remotely affected, here and 
there, by the light of lamps of oil, faintly twinkling 
in a disheartened Mantuan fashion. 

If you turn this pensive light upon the yellow 



3io ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

pages of her old chroniclers, it reveals pictures fit 
to raise both pity and wonder for the past of this 
city, — pictures full of the glory of struggles for 
freedom, of the splendor of wise princes, of the 
comfort of a prosperous and contented people, of 
the grateful fruits of protected arts and civilization ; 
but likewise stained with images of unspeakable 
filth and wickedness, baseness and cruelty, incredi- 
ble shame, suffering, and sin. 

Long before the birth of Christ, the Gauls drive 
out the Etruscans from Mantua, and aggrandize 
and beautify the city, to be in their turn expelled 
by the Romans, under whom Mantua again waxes 
strong and fair. In this time, the wife of a farmer 
not far from the city dreams a marvelous dream of 
bringing forth a laurel bough, and in due time bears 
into the world the chiefest of all Mantuans, with a 
smile upon his face. This is a poet, and they call 
his name Virgil. He goes from his native city to 
Rome, when ripe for glory, and has there the good 
fortune to win back his father's farm, which the 
greedy veterans of Augustus, then settled in the 
Cremonese, had annexed to the spoils bestowed 
upon them by the Emperor. Later in this Roman 
time, and only three years after the death of Him 
whom the poet all but prophesied, another grand 
event marks an epoch in Mantuan history. Ac- 
cording to the pious legend, the soldier Longinus, 
who pierced the side of Christ as he hung upon the 
cross, has been converted by a miracle ; wiping 
away that precious blood from his spear-head, and 



DUCAL MANTUA 311 

then drawing his hand across his eyes, he is sud- 
denly healed of his near-sightedness, and stricken 
with the full wonder of conviction. He gathers 
anxiously the drops of blood from his weapon into 
the phial from which the vinegar mixed with gall was 
poured, and, forsaking his life of soldier, he wan- 
ders with his new-won faith and his priceless trea- 
sure to Mantua, where it is destined to work famous 
miracles, and to be the most valued possession of 
the city to all after-time. The saint himself, preach- 
ing the Gospel of Christ, suffers martyrdom under 
Tiberius ; his tongue is cut out, and his body is 
burnt ; and his ashes are buried at Mantua, forgot- 
ten, and found again in after ages with due signs 
and miraculous portents. The Romans give a civil 
tranquillity to Mantua; but it is not till three cen- 
turies after Christ that the persecutions of the 
Christians cease. Then the temples of the gods 
are thrown down, and churches are built ; and the 
city goes forward to share the destinies of the 
Christianized empire, and be spoiled by the barbari- 
ans. In 407 the Goths take it, and the Vandals in 
their turn sack and waste it, and scatter its people, 
who return again after the storm, and rebuild their 
city. Attila, marching to destroy it, is met at 
Governo (as you see in Raphael's fresco in the Vati- 
can) by Pope Leo I., who conjures him to spare the 
city, and threatens him with Divine vengeance if 
he refuse ; above the pontiff's head two wrathful 
angels, bearing drawn swords, menace the Hun 
with death if he advance ; and, thus miraculously 



312 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

admonished, he turns aside from Mantua and spares 
it. The citizens successfully resist an attack of 
Alboin ; but the Longobards afterwards, unre- 
strained by the visions of Attila, beat the Mantuans 
and take the city. From the Lombards the Greeks, 
sent thither by the Exarch of Ravenna, capture 
Mantua about the end of the sixth century ; and 
then, the Lombards turning immediately to besiege 
it again, the Greeks defend their prize long and 
valiantly, but in the end are overpowered. They 
are allowed to retire with their men and arms to 
Ravenna, and the Lombards dismantle the city. 

Concerning our poor Mantua under Lombard 
rule there is but little known, except that she went 
to war with the Cremonese ; and it may be fairly 
supposed that she was, like her neighbors, com- 
pletely involved in foreign and domestic discords of 
every kind. That war with the Cremonese was 
about the possession of the river Ollio ; and the 
Mantuans came off victors in it, slaying immense 
numbers of the enemy, and taking some thousands 
of them prisoners, whom their countrymen ransomed 
on condition of building one of the gates of Mantua 
with materials from the Cremonese territory, and 
mortar mixed with water from the disputed Ollio. 
The reader easily conceives how bitter a pill this 
must have been for the proud Cremonese gentle- 
men of that day. 

When Charlemagne made himself master of 
Italy, the Mantuan lands and Mantuan men were 
divided up among the brave soldiers who had helped 






DUCAL MANTUA 313 

to enslave the country. These warriors of Charle- 
magne became counts ; and the contadini, or inhab- 
itants of each contado (county), became absolutely 
dependent on their will and pleasure. It is recorded 
(to the confusion of those who think primitive bar- 
barism is virtue) that the corruption of those rude 
and brutal old times was great, that all classes were 
sunk in vice, and that the clergy were especially 
venal and abominable. After the death of Charle- 
magne, in the ninth century, wars broke out all 
over Italy between the factions supporting different 
aspirants to his power ; and we may be sure that 
Mantua had some share in the common quarrel. As 
I have found no explicit record of this period, I dis- 
tribute to the city, as her portion of the calamities, 
at least two sieges, one capture and sack, and a de- 
cimation by famine and pestilence. We certainly 
read that, fifty years later, the Emperor Rudolph 
attacked it with his Hungarians, took it, pillaged it, 
and put great part of its people to the sword. Dur- 
ing the siege, some pious Mantuans had buried (to 
save them from the religious foe) the blood of 
Christ, and part of the sponge which had held the 
gall and vinegar, together with the body of St. 
Longinus. Most unluckily, however, these excel- 
lent men were put to the sword, and all knowledge 
of the place of sepulture perished with them. 

At the end of these wars Mantua received a lord, 
by appointment of the Emperor, and the first lord's 
soi married the daughter of the Duke of Lorraine, 
from which union was born the great Countess Ma- 



314 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

tilda. Boniface was the happy bridegroom's name, 
and the wedding had a wild splendor and profuse 
barbaric jollity about it which it is pleasant enough 
to read of after so much cutting and slashing. The 
viands were passed round on horseback to the 
guests, and the horses were shod with silver shoes 
loosely nailed on, that they might drop off and be 
scrambled for by the people. Oxen were roasted 
whole, and wine was drawn from wells with buckets 
hung on silver chains. It was the first great display 
of that magnificence of which after princes of Man- 
tua were so fond ; and the wretched hinds out of 
whose sweat it came no doubt thought it very fine. 

Of course Lord Boniface had his wars. There 
was a plot to depose him discovered in Mantua, and 
the plotters fled to Verona. Boniface demanded 
them ; but the Veronese answered stoutly that 
theirs was a free city, and no man should be taken 
from it against his will. Boniface marched to at- 
tack them ; and the Veronese were such fools as 
to call the Duke of Austria to their aid, promising 
submission to his government in return for his help. 
It was then that Austria first put her finger into 
the Italian pasticcio, where she kept it so many 
centuries. But the Austrian governor whom the 
duke set over the Veronese made himself intolera- 
ble, — the Austrian governor always does, — and 
they drove him out of the city. On this the duke 
turns about, unites with Boniface, takes Verona, and 
sacks it. 

An altogether pleasanter incident of Boniface's 



DUCAL MANTUA 315 

domination was the miraculous discovery of the 
sacred relics, buried and lost during the sack of 
Mantua by the Hungarians. The place of sepulture 
was revealed thrice to a blind pauper in a dream. 
People dug where he bade them and found the 
relics. Immediately on its exhumation the Blood 
wrought innumerable miracles ; and the fame of it 
grew so great that the Pope came to see it, attended 
by such concourse of the people that they were 
obliged to sleep in the streets. 

After the death of Boniface the lordship of Man- 
tua fell to his famous daughter, Matilda, of whom 
most have heard. She was a woman of strong will 
and strong mind ; she held her own, and rent from 
others, till she had united nearly all Lombardy 
under her rule. She was not much given to the 
domestic affections ; she had two husbands (succes- 
sively), and, if the truth must be told, divorced them 
both : one because he wished to share her sover- 
eignty, perhaps usurp it ; and the other because he 
was not warm enough friend of religion. She was 
a great friend to learning, — founded libraries, es- 
tablished the law schools at Bologna, caused the 
codification of the canon law, corresponded with 
distant nations, and spoke all the different languages 
of her soldiers. More than literature, however, she 
loved the Church ; and fought on the side of Pope 
Gregory VII. in his wars with the Emperor Henry 
IV. Henry therefore took Mantua from her in 
1091, and up to the year mi the city enjoyed a 
kind of republican government under his protection. 



316 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

In that year Henry made peace with Matilda, and 
appointed her his vice-regent in Italy; but the Man- 
tuans, after twenty years of freedom, were in no hu- 
mor to feel the weight of the mailed hand of this 
strong-minded lady. She was then, moreover, nigh 
to her death ; and hearing that her physicians had 
given her up, the Mantuans refused submission. 
The great countess rose irefully from her death- 
bed, and gathering her army, led it in person, as 
she always did, laid siege to Mantua by land and 
water, entered the city in 1114, and did not die till 
a year after. Such is female resolution. 

The Mantuans now founded a republican govern- 
ment, having unlimited immunities and privileges 
from the Emperor, whose power over them ex- 
tended merely to the investiture of their consuls. 
Their republic was democratic, the legislative coun- 
cil of nine rectors and three curators being elective 
by the whole people. This government, or some- 
thing like it, endured for more than a century, dur- 
ing which period the Mantuans seem to have done 
nothing but war with their neighbors in every di- 
rection, — with the Veronese chiefly, with the Cre- 
monese a good deal, with the Paduans, with the 
Ferrarese, with the Modenese and the Bolognese : 
indeed, we count up twelve of these wars. Like 
the English of their time, the Mantuans were 
famous bowmen, and their shafts took flight all 
over Lombardy. At the same time they did not 
omit to fight each other at home ; and it must have 
been a dullish kind of day in Mantua when there 



DUCAL MANTUA 317 

was no street battle between families of the factious 
nobility. Dante has peopled his Hell from the 
Italy of this time, and he might have gone farther 
and fared worse for a type of the infernal state. 
The spectacle of these countless little Italian pow- 
ers, racked, and torn, and blazing with pride, ag- 
gression, and disorder, within and without, — full of 
intrigue, anguish, and shame, — each with its petty 
chief of victorious faction making war upon the 
other, and bubbling over with local ambitions, per- 
sonal rivalries, and lusts, — is a spectacle which the 
traveler of to-day, passing over the countless for- 
gotten battlefields, and hurried from one famous 
city to another by railroad, can scarcely conjure up. 
Parma, Modena, Bologna, Ferrara, Padua, Mantua, 
Vicenza, Verona, Bassano, — all are now at peace 
with each other, and firmly united in the national 
sentiment that travelers were meant to be eaten 
alive by Italians. Poor old cities ! it is hard to con- 
ceive of their bygone animosities ; still harder to 
believe that all the villages squatting on the long 
white roads, and waking up to beg of you as your 
diligence passes, were once embroiled in deadly and 
incessant wars. 

Besides their local wars and domestic feuds, the 
Mantuans had troubles on a much larger scale, — 
troubles, indeed, which the Emperor Barbarossa 
laid out for all Italy. In Carlyle's "History of 
Frederick the Great " you can read a pleasant er ac- 
count of the Emperor's business at Roncaglia about 
this time than our Italian chroniclers will give you. 



318 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

Truly, one would hardly guess, from that picture 
of Frederick Redbeard at Roncaglia, with the 
standard set before his tent, inviting all men to 
come and have justice done them, that the Em- 
peror was actually at Roncaglia for the purpose of 
conspiring with his Diet to take away every vestige 
of liberty and independence from miserable Italy. 
Among other cities Mantua lost her freedom at this 
Diet, and was ruled by an imperial governor and by 
consuls of Frederick's nomination till 1167, when 
she joined the Lombard League against him. The 
leagued cities beat the Emperor at Legnano, and 
received back their liberties by the treaty of Cos- 
tanza in 11 83, after which, Frederick having with- 
drawn to Germany, they fell to fighting among 
themselves again with redoubled zeal, and rent 
their league into as many pieces as there had been 
parties to it. In 1236 the Germans again invaded 
Lombardy, under Frederick II. ; and aided by the 
troops of the Ghibelline cities, Verona, Padua, Vi- 
cenza, and Treviso, besieged Mantua, which sur- 
rendered to this formidable union of forces, thus 
becoming once more an imperial city, and irrep- 
arably fracturing the Lombard League. It does 
not appear, however, that her ancient liberties were 
withdrawn by Frederick II. ; and we read that the 
local wars went on after this with as little interrup- 
tion as before. The wars went on as usual, and on 
the old terms with Verona and Cremona, and there 
is little in their history to interest us. But in 1256 
the famous tyrant of Padua, Ecelino da Romano, 






DUCAL MANTUA 319 

who aspired to the dominion of Lombardy, gathered 
his forces and went and sat down before Mantua. 
The Mantuans refused to surrender at his sum- 
mons ; and Ecelino, who had very little notion of 
what the Paduans were doing in his absence, swore 
that he would cut down the vines in those pleasant 
Mantuan vineyards, plant new ones, and drink the 
wine of their grapes before ever he raised the siege. 
But meantime that conspiracy which ended in Ece- 
lino's ruin had declared itself in Padua, and the 
tyrant was forced to abandon the siege and look to 
his dominion of other cities. 

After which there was something like peace in 
Mantua for twenty years, and the city waxed pros- 
perous. Indeed, neither industry nor learning had 
wholly perished during the wars of the republic, 
and the people built grist-mills on the Mincio, and 
cultivated belles-lettres to some degree. Men of 
heavier science likewise flourished, and we read of 
jurists and astronomers born in those troublous 
days, as well as of a distinguished physican, who 
wrote a ponderous dictionary of simples, and dedi- 
cated it to King Robert of Naples. But by far the 
greatest Mantuan of this time was he of whom 
readers have heard something from a modern poet. 
He is the haughty Lombard soul, "in the move- 
ment of the eyes honest and slow," whom Dante, 
ascending the heights of Purgatory, beheld ; and 
who summoning all himself, leaped to the heart of 
Virgil when he named Mantua : " O Mantuan ! I 
am Sordello of thine own land ! " 



320 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

Of Virgil the superstition of the Middle Ages 
had made a kind of wizard, and of Sordello the old 
writers fable all manner of wonders ; he is both 
knight and poet, and has adventures scarcely less 
surprising than those of Amadis of Gaul. It is 
pretty nearly certain that he was born in 1189 of 
the Visconti di Goito, in the Mantuan country, and 
that he married Beatrice, a sister of Ecelino, and 
had amours with the youngest sister of this tyrant, 
the pretty Cunizza, whom Dante places in his " Par- 
adiso." This final disposition of Cunizza, whom we 
should hardly think now of assigning a place among 
the blest, surprised some people even in that day, 
it seems; for an old commentator defends it, saying : 
" Cunizza was always, it is true, tender and amo- 
rous, and properly called a daughter of Venus ; but 
she was also compassionate, benign, and merciful 
toward those unhappy ones whom her brother cru- 
elly tormented. Therefore the poet is right in 
feigning to find her in the sphere of Venus. For if 
the gentle Cyprians deified their Venus, and the 
Romans their Flora, how much more honestly may 
a Christian poet save Cunizza!' The lady, w r hose 
salvation is on these grounds inexpugnably accom- 
plished, was married to Count Sanbonifazio of 
Padua, in her twenty-fourth year ; and Sordello 
was early called to this nobleman's court, having 
already given proofs of his poetic genius. He fell 
in love with Cunizza, w T hom her lord, becoming the 
enemy of the Ecelini, began to ill-treat. A curious 
glimpse of the manners and morals of that day is 






DUCAL MANTUA 321 

afforded by the fact that the brothers of Cunizza 
conspired to effect her escape with Sordello from 
her husband's court, and that, under the protec- 
tion of Ecelino da Romano, the lovers were left 
unmolested. 

It was probably after this amour ended that Sor- 
dello set out upon his travels, visiting most courts, 
and dwelling long in Provence, where he learned to 
poetize in the Provencal tongue, in which he there- 
after chiefly wrote, and composed many songs. He 
did not, however, neglect his Lombard language, 
but composed in it a treatise on the art of defending 
towns. The Mantuan historian, Volta, says that 
some of Sordello's Provencal poems exist in manu- 
script in the Vatican and Chigi libraries at Rome, 
in the Laurentian at Florence, and the Estense at 
Modena. He was versed in arms as well as let- 
ters, and he caused Mantua to be surrounded with 
fosses five miles beyond her walls ; and the republic 
having lodged sovereign powers in his hands when 
Ecelino besieged the city, Sordello conducted the 
defense with great courage and ability, and did not 
at all betray the place to his obliging brother-in- 
law, as the latter expected. Verci, in his " History 
of the £061™,'' says: "The writers represent this 
Sordello as the most polite, the most gentle, the 
most generous man of his time, of middle stature, 
of beautiful aspect and fine person, of lofty bearing, 
agile and dexterous, instructed in letters, and a good 
poet, as his Provencal poems manifest. To these 
qualities he united military valor in such degree that 



322 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

no knight of his time could stand before him." He 
was properly the first lord of Mantua, and the re- 
public seems to have died with him in 1284. 

The madness which comes upon a people about 
to be enslaved commonly makes them the agents of 
their own undoing. The time had now come for 
the destruction of the last vestiges of liberty in 
Mantua, and the Mantuans, in their assembly of the 
Four Hundred and Ninety, voted full power into 
the hands of the destroyer. That Pinamonte Bona- 
colsi whom Dante mentions in the twentieth canto 
of the " Inferno/' had been elected captain of the 
republic, and, feigning to fear aggression from the 
Marquis of Ferrara, he demanded of the people the 
right to banish all enemies of the state. This rea- 
sonable demand was granted, and the captain ban- 
ished, as is well known, all enemies of Pinamonte 
Bonacolsi. After that, having things his own way, 
he began to favor public tranquillity, abolished 
family feuds and the ancient amusement of street- 
battles, and led his enslaved country in the paths 
of material prosperity ; for which he was no doubt 
lauded in his day by those who thought the Man- 
tuans were not prepared for freedom. He resolved 
to make the captaincy of the republic hereditary in 
the Bonacolsi family; and when he died, in 1293, 
his power descended to his son Bordellone. This 
Bordellone seems to have been a generous and mer- 
ciful captain enough, but he loved ease and plea- 
sure ; and a rough nephew of his, Guido Botticella, 
conspired against him to that degree that Bordel- 



DUCAL MANTUA 323 

lone thought best, for peace and quietness' sake, to 
abdicate in his favor. Guido had the customary- 
war with the Marquis of Ferrara, and then died, 
and was succeeded by his brother Passerino, a very- 
bad person, whose son at last brought his whole 
family to grief. The Emperor made him vicar of 
Modena ; and he used the Modenese very cruelly, 
and shut up Francesco Pico and his sons in a tower, 
where he starved them, as the Pisans did Ugolino. 
In those days, also, the Pope was living at Avignon, 
and people used to send him money and other com- 
forts there out of Italy. An officer of Passerino's, 
being of Ghibelline politics, attacked one of these 
richly laden emissaries, and took his spoils, dividing 
them with Passerino. For this the Pope naturally 
excommunicated the captain of Mantua, and there- 
upon his neighbors made a great deal of pious war 
upon him. But he beat the Bolognese, the most 
pious of his foes, near Montevoglio, and with his 
Modenese took from them that famous bucket, about 
which Tassoni made his great Bernesque epic, " The 
Rape of the Bucket " {La Secchia Rapitd), and 
which still hangs in the tower of the Duomo at Mo- 
dena. Meantime, while Passerino had done every- 
thing to settle himself comfortably and permanently 
in the tyranny of Mantua, his worthless son Fran- 
cesco fell in love with the wife of Filippino Gonzaga. 
According to the old Mantuan chronicles the 
Gonzagas were of a royal German line, and had 
fixed themselves in the Mantuan territory in 770, 
where they built a castle beyond Po, and began at 



324 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

once to take part in public affairs. They had now 
grown to be a family of such consequence that they 
could not be offended with impunity, and it was a 
great misfortune to the Bonacolsi that Francesco 
happened to covet Filippino Gonzaga's wife. The 
insult sank deep into the bitter hearts of the Gon- 
zagas ; and the head of that proud race, Filippino's 
uncle, Luigi Gonzaga, resolved to avenge the family 
dishonor. He was a secret and taciturn man, and 
a pious adulator of his line has praised him for the 
success with which he dissembled his hatred of the 
Bonacolsi, while conspiring to sweep them and their 
dominion away. He won over adherents among 
the Mantuans, and then made a league with Can 
Grande of Verona to divide the spoils of the Bo- 
nacolsi ; and so, one morning, having bribed the 
guards to open the city gates, he entered Mantua 
at the head of the banded forces. The population 
was roused with patriotic cries of " Long live the 
Mantuan people!" and, as usual, believed, poor 
souls, that some good was meant them by those 
who came to overthrow their tyrants. The Bona- 
colsi were dreaming that pleasant morning of any- 
thing but ruin, and they offered no resistance to the 
insurrection till it burst out in the great square 
before the Castello di Corte. They then made a 
feeble sally from the castle, but were swiftly driven 
back, and Passerino, wounded to death under the 
great Gothic archway of the palace, as he retreated, 
dropped from his languid hands the bridle-rein of 
his charger and the reins of that government with 



DUCAL MANTUA 325 

which he had so long galled Mantua. The unhappy- 
Francesco fled to the cathedral for protection ; but 
the Gonzagas slew him at the foot of the altar. 
Passerino's brother, a bishop, was flung into a tower 
to starve, that the Picos might be avenged ; and the 
city of Mantua was liberated. 

In that day, when you. freed a city from a tyrant, 
you gave it up to be pillaged by the army of liber- 
ation ; and Mantua was now sacked by her deliv- 
erers. Can Grande's share of the booty alone 
amounted to a hundred thousand gold florins (about 
two hundred and fifty thousand dollars). The 
Mantuans, far from imitating the ungrateful Pad- 
uans, who, when the Crusaders liberated them from 
Ecelino, grudged these brave fellows three days' 
pillage of their city, and even wished back their old 
tyrant, — the Mantuans, we say, seemed not in the 
least to mind being devoured, but gratefully elected 
the Gonzaga their captain-general, and purchased 
him absolution from the Pope for his crimes com- 
mitted in the sack. They got this absolution for 
twenty thousand gold florins ; and the Pope prob- 
ably sold it cheap, remembering his old grudge 
against the Bonacolsi, whom the Gonzaga had over- 
thrown. All this was in the year of grace 1328. 

When Luigi Gonzaga was made lord of Mantua, 
he left his castle beyond Po, to dwell in the city. 
In this castle he had dwelt, like other lords of his 
time, in the likeness of a king, spending regally, 
and keeping state and open house in an edifice 
strongly built about with walls, encircled with 



326 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

ditches passable by a single drawbridge, and 
guarded day and night, from castle moat to cas- 
tle crest, by armed vassals. Hundreds ate daily at 
his board, which was heaped with a rude and rich 
profusion, and furnished with carven goblets and 
plate of gold and silver. In fair weather the ban- 
quet-hall stood open to all the winds that blew ; in 
foul, the guests were sheltered from the storm by 
curtains of oiled linen, and the place was lighted 
with torches borne by splendidly attired pages. 
The great saloons of the castle were decked with 
tapestries of Flanders and Damascus, and the floor 
was strewn with straw or rushes. The bed in which 
the lord and lady slept was the couch of a mon- 
arch ; the household herded together in the empty 
chambers, and lay upon the floor like swine. The 
garden-fields about the castle smiled with generous 
harvests ; the peasant lay down after his toil, at 
night, in deadly fear of invasion from some neigh- 
boring state, which should rob him of everything, 
dishonor his wife and daughters, and slay him upon 
the smoking ruins of his home. 

In the city to which this lord repaired, the 
houses were built here and there at caprice, without 
numbers or regularity, and only distinguished by 
the figure of a saint, or some pious motto painted 
above the door. Cattle wandered at will through 
the crooked, narrow, and filthy streets, which rang 
with the clamor of frequent feud, and reeked with 
the blood of the embattled citizens ; over all the 
squalor and wickedness rose the loveliest temples 



DUCAL MANTUA 327 

that ever blossomed from man's love of the beauti- 
ful to the honor and glory of God. 

It was a time ignorant of the simplest comfort, 
but debauched with the vices of luxury ; in which 
cities repressed the license of their people by laws 
regulating the length of women's gowns and the 
outlays at weddings and funerals. Every wild mis- 
deed and filthy crime was committed, and punished 
by terrible penalties, or atoned for by fines. A 
fierce democracy reigned, banishing nobles, razing 
their palaces, and ploughing up the salt-sown sites ; 
till at last, in a paroxysm of madness, it delivered 
itself up to lords to be defended from itself, and 
was crushed into slavery. Literature and architec- 
ture flourished, and the sister arts were born amid 
the struggles of human nature convulsed with every 
abominable passion. 

For nearly four hundred years the Gonzagas con- 
tinued to rule the city, which the first prince of 
their line, having well-nigh destroyed, now rebuilt 
and restored to greater splendor than ever ; and it 
is the Mantua of the Gonzagas which travelers of 
this day look upon when they visit the famous old 
city. Their pride and their wealth adorned it ; their 
wisdom and prudence made it rich and prosperous ; 
their valor glorified it ; their crimes stain its annals 
with infamy ; their wickedness and weakness ruined 
it and brought it low. They were a race full of 
hereditary traits of magnificence, but one reads their 
history, and learns to love, of all their long succes- 
sion, only one or two in their pride, learns to pity 



328 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

only one or two in their fall. They were patriotic, 
but the patriotism of despotic princes is self-love. 
They were liberal — in spending the revenues of 
the state for the glory of their family. They were 
brave, and led many nameless Mantuans to die in 
forgotten battles for alien quarrels which they never 
understood. 

The succession of the Gonzagas was of four cap- 
tains, ending in 1407 ; four marquises, ending in 
1484 ; and ten dukes, ending in 1708. 

The first of the captains was Luigi, as we know. 
In his time the great Gothic fabric of the Castello 
di Corte was built ; and having rebuilt the portions 
of the city wasted by the sack, he devoted himself, 
as far as might be in that age, to the arts of peace ; 
and it is remembered of him that he tried to cure 
the Mantuan air of its feverish unwholesomeness 
by draining the swampy environs. During his time, 
Petrarch, making a sentimental journey to the 
birthplace of Virgil, was splendidly entertained and 
greatly honored by him. For the rest, Can Grande 
of Verona was by no means content with his hun- 
dred thousand golden florins of spoil from the sack 
of the city, but aspired to its sovereignty, declaring 
that he had understood Gonzaga to have promised 
him it as the condition of alliance against the Bo- 
nacolsi. Gonzaga construed the contract differ- 
ently, and had so little idea of parting with his 
opinion, that he fought the Scaligero on this point 
of difference till he died, which befell thirty years 
after his election to the captaincy. 



DUCAL MANTUA 329 

Him his son Guido succeeded, — a prince already- 
old at the time of his father's death, and of feeble 
spirit. He shared his dominion with his son Ugo- 
lino, excluding the younger brothers from the do- 
minion. These, indignant at the partiality, one 
night slew their brother Ugolino at a supper he was 
giving ; and being thereupon admitted to a share in 
their father's government, had no trouble in obtain- 
ing the pardon of the Pope and Emperor. One of 
the murderers died before the father ; the other, 
named Ludovico, was, on the death of Guido, in 
1370, elected to the captaincy, and ruled long, 
wisely, and well. He loved a peaceful life ; and 
though the Emperor confirmed him in the honors 
conferred on him by the Mantuans, and made him 
vicar imperial, Ludovico declined to take part with 
Ghibellines against Guelphs, remained quietly at 
home, and spent himself much in good works, as if 
he would thus expiate his bloody crime. He gath- 
ered artists, poets, and learned men about him, and 
did much to foster all arts. In his time, Mantua 
had rest from war, and grew to have twenty-eight 
thousand inhabitants ; but it was not in the nature 
of a city of the Middle Ages to be long without a 
calamity of some sort, and it is a kind of relief to 
know that Mantua, under this peaceful prince, was 
well-nigh depopulated by a pestilence. 

In 1 38 1 he died, and with his son Francesco the 
blood-letting began again. Indeed, this captain 
spent nearly his whole life in war with those plea- 
sant people, the Visconti of Milan. He had mar- 



330 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

ried the daughter of Barnabo Visconti, but discov- 
ering her to be unfaithful to him, or believing hei 
so, he caused her to be put to death, refusing all 
her family's intercessions for mercy. After that, a 
heavy sadness fell upon him, and he wandered aim- 
lessly about in many Italian cities, and at last mar- 
ried a second time, taking to wife Margherita Mala- 
testa. He was a prince of high and generous soul 
and of manly greatness rare in his time. There 
came once a creature of the Visconti to him, with a 
plot for secretly taking off his masters ; but the 
Gonzaga (he must have been thought an eccentric 
man by his neighbors) dismissed the wretch with 
horror. I am sure the reader will be glad to know 
that he finally beat the Visconti in fair fight, and 
(the pest still raging in Mantua) lived to make a 
pilgrimage to the Holy Land. When he returned, 
he compiled the city's statutes, divided the town into 
four districts, and named its streets. So he died. 

And after this prince had made his end, there 
came another Francesco, or Gianfrancesco, who was 
created Marquis of Mantua by the Emperor Sigis- 
mund. He was a friend of war, and having been 
the ward of the Venetian Republic he became the 
leader of her armies on the death of Carmagnola. 
The Gonzaga took Verona and Padua for the re- 
public, and met the Milanese in many battles. 
Venice was then fat with the spoils of the Orient, 
and it is probable that the Marquis of Mantua 
acquired there that taste for splendor which he 
introduced into his hitherto frugal little state. We 






DUCAL MANTUA 331 

read of his being in Venice in 14 14, when the 
Jewelers and Goldsmiths' Guild gave a tournament 
in the Piazza San Marco, offering as prizes to the 
victorious lances a collar enriched with peails and 
diamonds, the work of the jewelers, and two hel- 
mets excellently wrought by the goldsmiths. On 
this occasion the Gonzaga, with two hundred and 
sixty Mantuan gentlemen, mounted on superb 
horses, contested the prizes with the Marquis of 
Ferrara, at the head of two hundred Ferrarese, 
equally mounted, and attended by their squires and 
pages, magnificently dressed. There were sixty 
thousand spectators of the encounter. " Both the 
marquises," says Mutinelli in his " Annali Urbani," 
" being each assisted by fourteen well-armed cava- 
liers, combated valorously at the barrier, and were 
both judged worthy of the first prize : a Mantuan 
cavalier took the second." 

The Marquis Gonzaga was the first of his line 
who began that royal luxury of palaces with which 
Mantua was adorned. He commenced the Ducal 
Palace ; but before he went far with the work he 
fell a prey to the science then much affected by 
Italian princes, but still awaiting its last refinement 
from the gifted Lucrezia Borgia. The poor mar- 
quis was poisoned by his wife's paramour, and died 
in the year 1444. Against this prince is recorded 
the vandalism of causing to be thrown down and 
broken in pieces the antique statue of Virgil which 
stood in one of the public places of Mantua, and of 
which the head is still shown in the Museum of the 






332 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

city. In all times, the Mantuans had honored, in 
divers ways, their great poet, and at certain epochs 
had coined money bearing his face. With the com- 
mon people he had a kind of worship (more likely 
as wizard than as poet), and they celebrated an- 
nually some now-forgotten event by assembling 
with songs and dances about the statue of Virgil 
which was destroyed by the uncle of the marquis, 
Malatesta, rather than by the marquis's own order. 
This ill-conditioned person is supposed to have been 
" vexed because our Mantuan people thought it 
their highest glory to be fellow-citizens of the prince 
of poets. ,, 

Francesco having consented, by his acceptance 
of the marquisate, to become a prince of the Ro- 
man Empire, Mantua was thus subjected to the 
Emperors, but liberty had long been extinguished ; 
and the voluntary election of the Council, which 
bestowed the captaincy on each succeeding genera- 
tion of the Gonzagas, was a mere matter of form, 
and of course. 

The next prince, Lodovico Gonzaga, was an aus- 
tere man, and had been bred in a hard school, if I 
may believe some of the old chroniclers, whom, in- 
deed, I sometimes suspect of being not altogether 
faithful. It is said that his father loved his younger 
brother better than him, and that Lodovico ran 
away in his boyhood, and took refuge with his 
father's hereditary enemies, the Visconti. To make 
dates agree, it must have been the last of these, for 
the line failed during Lodovico's time, and he had 






DUCAL MANTUA 333 

wars with the succeeding Sforza. In the day of 
his escapade, Milan was at war with Mantua and 
with Venice, and the Marquis Gonzaga was at the 
head of the united armies, as we have already seen. 
So the father and son met in several battles ; though 
the Visconti, out of love for the boy, and from a 
sentiment of piety somewhat amazing in them, con- 
trived that he should never actually encounter his 
parent face to face. Lodovico came home after the 
wars, wearing a long beard ; and his mother called 
her son " the Turk," a nickname that he never lost. 

II Turco was a lover of the arts and of letters, 
and he did many works to enrich and beautify the 
city. He established the first printing-office in 
Mantua, where the first book printed was the 
" Decamerone " of Boccaccio. He founded a col- 
lege of advocates, and he dug canals for irrigation ; 
and the prosperity of Mantuan manufacturers in 
his time may be inferred from the fact that when 
the King of Denmark paid him a visit, in 1474, the 
merchants decked their shops with five thousand 
pieces of fine Mantuan cloth. 

The marquis made his brilliant little court the 
resort of the arts and letters ; and hither from Flor- 
ence came once the elegant Politian, who composed 
his tragedy of " Orfeo " in Mantua, and caused it 
to be first represented before Lodovico. But it 
must be confessed that this was a soil in which art 
flourished better than literature, and that even born 
Mantuan poets went off, after awhile, and flourished 
in other air. The painter Mantegna, whom the 



334 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

marquis invited from Padua, passed his whole life 
here, painting for the marquis in the palaces and 
churches. The prince loved him, and gave him a 
house, and bestowed other honors upon him ; and 
Mantegna executed for Lodovico his famous pictures 
representing the Triumph of Julius Caesar. 1 It was 
divided into nine compartments, and, as a frieze, 
went round the upper part of Lodovico's newly 
erected palace of San Sebastian. Mantegna also 
painted a hall in the Castello di Corte, called the 
Stanza di Mantegna, and there, among other sub- 
jects of fable and of war, made the portraits of 
Lodovico and his wife. It was partly the wish to 
see such works of Mantegna as still remained in 
Mantua that took us thither ; and it was chiefly this 
wish that carried us, the morning after our arrival, 
to the Castello di Corte, or the Ducal Palace. 

If the reader cares to fancy a wide piazza, or open 
square, with a church upon the left hand, immense, 
uninteresting edifices on the right, and an ugly 
bishop's palace of Renaissance taste behind him, he 
may figure before him as vastly and magnificently 
as he pleases the superb Gothic front of the Castello 
di Corte. This fagade is the only one in Italy that 
reminds you of the Ducal Palace at Venice ; and it 
does this merely by right of its short pillars and 
deep Gothic arches in the ground story, and the 
great breadth of wall that rises above them, un- 
broken by the second line of columns which relieves 
and lightens this wall in the Venetian palace. It 
1 Now at Hampton Court, in England. 



DUCAL MANTUA 335 

stands at an extremity of the city, upon the edge of 
the broad fresh-water lagoon, and is of such extent 
as to include within its walls a whole court-city 
of theatre, church, stables, playground, course for 
riding, and several streets. There is a far older 
edifice adjoining the Castello di Corte, which Guido 
Bonacolsi began, and which witnessed the bloody 
end of his line, when Louis Gonzaga surprised and 
slew his last successor. But the palace itself is all 
the work of the Gonzagas, and it remains the monu- 
ment of their kingly state and splendid pride. 

But it is known that the works of Mantegna suf- 
fered grievously in the wars of the last century, and 
his memory has faded so dim in this palace where 
he wrought, that the guide could not understand 
the curiosity of the foreigners concerning the old 
painter ; and certainly Giulio Romano has stamped 
himself more ineffaceably than Mantegna upon 
Mantua. 

In the Ducal Palace are seen vividly contrasted 
the fineness and strength, the delicacy and courage 
of the fancy, which, rather than the higher gift of 
imagination, characterize Giulio's work. There is 
such an airy refinement and subtile grace in the 
pretty grotesques with which he decorates a cham- 
ber ; there is such daring luxury of color and design 
in the pictures for which his grand halls are merely 
the frames. No doubt I could make fine speeches 
about these paintings ; but who, not seeing them, 
would be the wiser, after the best description and 
the choicest critical disquisition ? In fact, our travel- 



336 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

ers themselves found it pleasanter, after a while, to 
yield to the guidance of the custode, and to enjoy 
the stupider marvels of the place, than to do the set 
and difficult admiration of the works of art. So, 
passing the apartments in good preservation (the 
Austrian emperors had taken good care of some 
parts of the palace of one of their first Italian pos- 
sessions), they did justice to the splendor of the 
satin beds and the other upholstery work ; they 
admired rich carpentering and costly toys ; they 
dwelt on marvelous tapestries (among which the 
tapestry copies of Raphael's cartoons, woven at 
Mantua in the fifteenth century, are certainly 
worthy of wonder) ; and they expressed the proper 
amazement at the miracles of art which caused fig- 
ures frescoed in the ceilings to turn with them, and 
follow and face them from whatever part of the 
room they chose to look. Nay, they even enjoyed 
the Hall of the Rivers, on the sides of which the 
usual river-gods were painted, in the company of 
the usual pottery, from which they pour their founts, 
and at the end of which there was an abominable 
little grotto of what people call, in modern land- 
scape-gardening, rock-work, out of the despair with 
which its unmeaning ugliness fills them. There 
was, besides all this, a hanging garden in this small 
Babylon which occupied a spacious oblong, and had 
a fountain and statues, trees and flowers, and would 
certainly have been taken for the level of the earth, 
had not the custode proudly pointed out that it was 
on a level with the second floor, where they stood. 



DUCAL MANTUA 337 

After that they wandered through a series of un- 
used, dismantled apartments and halls, melancholy 
with faded fresco, dropping stucco, and mutilated 
statues of plaster, and came at last upon a balcony 
overlooking the Cavallerizza, which one of the early 
dukes built after a design by the inevitable Giulio 
Romano. It is a large square, and was meant for 
the diversion of riding on horseback. Balconies go 
all round it between those thick columns, finely 
twisted, as we see them in that cartoon of Raphael, 
"The Healing of the Lame Man at the Beautiful 
Gate of the Temple ; " and here once stood the jolly 
dukes and the ladies of their light-hearted court, and 
there below rode the gay, insolent, intriguing cour- 
tiers, and outside groaned the city under the heavy 
extortions of the tax-gatherers. It is all in weather- 
worn stucco, and the handsome square is planted 
with trees. The turf was now cut and carved by the 
heavy wheels of the Austrian baggage-wagons con- 
stantly passing through the court to carry munitions 
to the fortress outside, whose black guns grimly 
overlook the dead lagoon. A sense of desolation 
had crept over the sight-seers, with that strange 
sickness of heart which one feels in the presence of 
ruin not to be lamented, and which deepened into 
actual pain as the custode clapped his hands and 
the echo buffeted itself against the forlorn stucco, 
and up from the trees rose a score of sullen, slum- 
berous owls, and flapped heavily across the lonesome 
air with melancholy cries. It only needed, to crush 
these poor strangers, that final touch which the 



338 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

custode gave, as they passed from the palace 
through the hall in which are painted the Gonzagas, 
and in which he pointed out the last Duke of Man- 
tua, saying he was deposed by the Emperor for 
felony, and somehow conveying the idea of horse- 
stealing and counterfeiting on the part of his Grace. 
A very different man from this rogue was our old 
friend Lodovico, who also, however, had his troubles. 
He was an enemy of the Ghibellines, and fought 
them a great deal. Of course he had the habitual 
wars with Milan, and he was obliged to do battle 
with his own brother Carlo to some extent. This 
Gonzaga had been taken prisoner by Sforza ; and 
Lodovico, having paid for him a ransom of sixty 
thousand florins of gold (which Carlo was scarcely 
worth), seized the fraternal lands, and held them 
in pledge of repayment. Carlo could not pay, and 
tried to get back his possessions by war. Vexed 
with these and other contentions, Lodovico was also 
unhappy in his son, whose romance I may best tell 
in the words of the history 1 from which I take it. 

" Lodovico Gonzaga, having agreed with the Duke of 
Bavaria to take his daughter Margherita as wife for his 
(Lodovico's) first-born, Federico, and the young man 
having refused her, Lodovico was so much enraged that 
he sought to imprison him ; but the Marchioness Bar- 
bara, mother of Federico, caused him to fly from the city 
till his father's anger should be abated. Federico de- 
parted with six attendants ; 2 but this flight caused still 

1 Volta, Storia di Mantova. 

2 The Fioretto delle Cronache says " persons of gentle condi- 
tion." 



DUCAL MANTUA 339 

greater displeasure to his father, who now declared him 
banished, and threatened with heavy penalties any one 
who should give him help or favor. Federico, therefore, 
wandered about with these six attendants in divers 
places, and finally arrived in Naples ; but having al- 
ready spent all his substance, and not daring to make 
himself known for fear of his father, he fell into great 
want, and so into severe sickness. His companions 
having nothing wherewith to live, and not knowing any 
trade by which to gain their bread, did menial services 
fit for day-laborers, and sustained their lord with their 
earnings, he remaining hidden in a poor woman's house 
where they all dwelt. 

" The Marchioness had sent many messengers in 
divers provinces with money to find her son, but they 
never heard any news of him ; so that they thought him 
dead, not hearing anything, either, of his attendants. 
Now it happened that one of those who sought Feder- 
ico came to Naples, and presented himself to the king 
with a letter from the said lady, praying that he should 
make search in his territory for a company of seven 
men, giving the name and description of each. The 
king caused this search to be made by the heads of 
the district ; and one of these heads told how in his 
district there were six Lombard men (not knowing of 
Federico, who lay ill), but that they were laborers and 
of base condition. The king determined to see them ; 
and they being come before him, he demanded who 
they were, and how many ; as they were not willing to 
discover their lord, on being asked their names they 
gave others, so that the king, not being able to learn 
anything, would have dismissed them. But the messen- 
ger sent by the Marchioness knew them, and said to 



340 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

the king, ' Sire, these are the attendants of him whom I 
seek ; but they have changed their names.' The king 
caused them to be separated one from another, and 
then asked them of their lord ; and they, finding them- 
selves separated, minutely narrated everything ; and the 
king immediately sent for Federico, whom his officers 
found miserably ill on a heap of straw. He was brought 
to the palace, where the king ordered him to be cared 
for, sending the messenger back to his mother to advise 
her how the men had been found and in what great mis- 
ery. The Marchioness went to her husband, and, hav- 
ing cast herself at his feet, besought him of a grace. 
The Marquis answered that he would grant everything, 
so it did not treat of Federico. Then the lady opened 
him the letter of the king of Naples, which had such 
effect that it softened the soul of the Marquis, showing 
him in how great misery his son had been ; and so, giv- 
ing the letter to the Marchioness, he said, ' Do that 
which pleases you.' The Marchioness straightway sent 
the prince money, and clothes to clothe him, in order 
that he should return to Mantua ; and having come, the 
son cast himself at his father's feet, imploring pardon 
for himself and for his attendants ; and he pardoned 
them, and gave those attendants enough to live honor- 
ably and like noblemen, and they were called The 
Faithful of the House of Gonzaga, and from them come 
the Fedeli of Mantua. 

"The Marquis then, not to break faith, caused Fed' 
erico to take Margherita, daughter of the Duke of Ba- 
varia, for his wife, and celebrated the nuptials splen- 
didly ; so that there remained the greatest love between 
father and son." 



DUCAL MANTUA 341 

The son succeeded to the father's dominion in 
1478 ; and it is recorded of him in the "Flower of 
the Chronicles, ,, that he was a hater of idleness, 
and a just man, greatly beloved by his people. 
Federico was marquis only six years and died in 
1484, leaving his marquisate to his son Francesco, 
the most ambitious, warlike, restless, splendid prince 
of his magnificent race. This Gonzaga wore a 
beard, and brought the custom into fashion in Italy 
again. He founded the famous breed of Mantuan 
horses and gave them about free-handedly to other 
sovereigns of his acquaintance. To the English 
king he presented a steed which, if we may trust 
history, could have been sold for almost its weight 
in gold. He was so fond of hunting that he kept 
two hundred dogs of the chase, and one hundred 
and fifty birds of prey. 

Of course this Gonzaga was a soldier, and indeed 
he loved war better even than hunting, and de- 
lighted so much in personal feats of arms that, con- 
cealing his name and quality, in order that the com- 
bat should be in all things equal, he was wont to 
challenge renowned champions wherever he heard 
of them, and to meet them in the lists. Great part 
of his life was spent in the field ; and he fought in 
turn on nearly all sides of the political questions 
then agitating Italy. In 1495 he was at the head 
of the Venetian and other Italian troops when they 
beat the French under Charles VIII. at Taro, and 
made so little use of their victory as to let their van- 
quished invaders escape from them after all. Never 



342 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

theless if the Gonzaga did not here show himself a 
great general, he did great feats of personal valor, 
penetrating to the midst of the French forces, 
wounding the king, and with his own hand taking 
prisoner the great Bastard of Bourbon. Venice 
paid him ten thousand ducats for gaining the vic- 
tory, such as it was, and when peace was made he 
went to visit the French king at Vercelli ; and there 
Charles gave his guest a present of two magnificent 
horses, which the Gonzaga returned yet more splen- 
didly in kind. About five years later he was again 
at war with the French, and helped the Aragonese 
drive them out of Naples. In 1506 Pope Julius II. 
made him leader of the armies of the Church (for 
he had now quitted the Venetian service), and he 
reduced the city of Bologna to obedience to the 
Holy See. In 1509 he joined the League of Cam- 
bray against Venice, and, being made Imperial 
Captain-General, was taken prisoner by the Vene- 
tians. They liberated him, however, the following 
year ; and in 15 13 we find him at the head of the 
league against the French. 

A curious anecdote of this Gonzaga's hospitality 
is also illustrative of the anomalous life of those 
times when good faith had as little to do with the 
intercourse of nations as at present ; but good for- 
tune, when she appeared in the world, liked to put 
on a romantic and melodramatic guise. An ambas- 
sador from the Grand Turk on his way to Rome was 
taken by an enemy of the Pope, despoiled of all his 
money, and left planted, as the Italians expressively 



DUCAL MANTUA 343 

say, at Ancona. This ambassador had come to 
concert with Alexander VI. the death of Bajazet's 
brother, prisoner in the Pope's hands, and he bore 
the Pope a present of 50,000 gold ducats. It was 
Gian Delia Rovere who seized and spoiled him, and 
sent the papers (letters of the Pope and Sultan) to 
Charles VIII. of France, to whom Alexander had 
been obliged to give the Grand Turk's brother. 
The magnificent Gonzaga hears of the Turk's em- 
barrassing mischance, sends and fetches him to 
Mantua, clothes him, puts abundant money in his 
purse, and dispatches him on his way. The Sultan, 
in reward of this courtesy to his servant, gave a 
number of fine horses to the marquis, who, possibly 
being tired of presenting his own horses, returned 
the Porte a shipload of excellent Mantuan cheeses. 
The interchange of compliments seems to have led 
to a kind of romantic friendship between the Gon- 
zaga and the Grand Turk, who did occasionally in- 
terest himself in the affairs of the Christian dogs ; 
and who, when Francesco lay prisoner at Venice, 
actually wrote to the Serenest Senate, and asked 
his release as a personal grace to him, the Grand 
Turk. And Francesco was, thereupon, let go ; the 
canny republic being willing to do the Sultan any 
sort of cheap favor. 

This Gonzaga, being so much engaged in war, 
seems to have had little time for the adornment of 
his capital. The Church of Our Lady of Victory 
is the only edifice which he added to it ; and this 
was merely in glorification of his own triumph over 



344 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

the French at Taro. Mantegna painted an altar- 
piece for it, representing the marquis and his wife 
on their knees before the Virgin, in act of rendering 
her thanks for the victory. The French nation 
avenged itself for whatever wrong was done its 
pride in this picture by stealing it away from Man- 
tua in Napoleon's time ; and it now hangs in the 
gallery of the Louvre. 

Francesco died in 15 19; and after him his son, 
Federico II., the first Duke of Mantua, reigned 
some twenty-one years, and died in 1540. The 
marquisate in his time was made a duchy by the 
Emperor Charles V., to whom the Gonzaga had 
given efficient aid in his wars against the French. 
This was in the year 1530; and three years later, 
when the Duke of Monferrato died, and the inherit- 
ance of his opulent little state was disputed by the 
Duke of Savoy, by the Marquis of Saluzzo, and 
by the Gonzaga who had married the late duke's 
daughter, Charles's influence secured it to the Man- 
tuan. The dominions of the Gonzagas had now 
reached their utmost extent, and these dominions 
were not curtailed till the deposition of Fernando 
Carlo in 1708, when Monferrato was adjudged to 
the Duke of Savoy, and afterwards confirmed to 
him by treaty. It was separated from the capital 
of the Gonzagas by a wide extent of alien territory, 
but they held it with a strong hand, embellished 
the city, and founded there the strongest citadel in 
Italy. 

Federico, after his wars for the Emperor, appears 



DUCAL MANTUA 345 

to have reposed in peace for the rest of his days, 
and to have devoted himself to the adornment of 
Mantua and the aggrandizing of his family. His 
court was the home of many artists ; and Titian 
painted for him the Twelve Caesars which the Ger- 
mans stole when they sacked the city in 1630. But 
his great agent and best beloved genius was Giulio 
Pippi, called Romano, who was conducted to Man- 
tua by pleasant Count Baldassare Castiglione. 

Pleasant Count Baldassare Castiglione ! whose 
incomparable book of the " Cortigiano " succeeded 
in teaching his countrymen every gentlemanly grace 
but virtue. He was born at Casatico in the Man- 
tovano, in the year 1476, and went in his boyhood 
to be schooled at Milan, where he learnt the pro- 
fession of arms. From Milan he went to Rome, 
where he exercised his profession of arms till the 
year 1504, when he was called to gentler uses at 
the court of the elegant Dukes of Urbino. He lived 
there as courtier and court-poet, and he returned to 
Rome as the ambassador from Urbino. Meantime 
his liege, Francesco Gonzaga, was but poorly 
pleased that so brilliant a Mantuan should spend 
his life in the service and ornament of other princes, 
and Castiglione came back to his native country 
about the year 15 16. He married in Mantua, and 
there finished his famous book of "The Courtier," 
and succeeded in winning back the favor of his 
prince. Federico, the duke, made him ambassador 
to Rome in 1528; and Baldassare did his master 
two signal services there, — he procured him to be 



346 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

named head of all the Papal forces, and he found 
him Giulio Romano. So the duke suffered him to 
go as the Pope's nuncio to Spain, and Baldassare 
finished his courtly days at Toledo in 1529. 

The poet made a detour to Mantua on his way to 
Spain, taking with him the painter, whom the duke 
received with many caresses, as Vasari says, pre- 
sented him a house honorably furnished, ordered 
provision for him and his pupils, gave them certain 
brave suits of velvet and satin, and, seeing that 
Giulio had no horse, called for his own favorite and 
bestowed it on him. They knew how to receive 
painters, those fine princes, who had merely to put 
their hands into their people's pocket and take out 
what florins they liked. So the duke presently 
set the artist to work, riding out with him through 
the gate of San Bastiano to some stables about a 
bow-shot from the walls, in the midst of a flat mea- 
dow, where he told Giulio that he would be glad 
(if it could be done without destroying the old 
walls) to have such buildings added to the stables 
as would serve him for a kind of lodge, to come out 
and merrily sup in when he liked. Whereupon 
Giulio began to think out the famous Palazzo del T. 

Castiglione had found the painter at Rome, after 
the death of his master Raphael, when his genius, 
for good or for ill, began for the first time to find 
original expression. At Mantua he spent all the 
rest of his busy life, and as in Venice all the Ma- 
donnas in the street-corner shrines have some touch 
of color to confess the painter's subjection to Titian 



DUCAL MANTUA 347 

or Tintoretto ; as in Vicenza the edifices are all 
stilted upon pedestals in honor and homage to Pal- 
ladio ; as in Parma Correggio has never died, but 
lives to this day in the mouths and chiaroscuro 
effects of all the figures in all the pictures painted 
there ; — so in Mantua Giulio Romano is to be 
found in the lines of every painting and every 
palace. 

Giulio Romano did a little of everything for the 
Dukes of Mantua, — from painting the most deli- 
cate or indelicate little fresco for a bed-chamber, 
to restraining the Po and the Mincio with immense 
dikes, restoring ancient edifices and building new 
ones, draining swamps and demolishing and re- 
constructing whole streets, painting palaces and 
churches, and designing the city slaughter-house. 
He grew old and very rich in the service of the 
Gonzagas ; but though Mrs. Jameson says he com- 
manded respect by a sense of his own dignity as an 
artist, the Bishop of Casale, who wrote the " Annali 
di Mantova," says that the want of nobility and 
purity in his style, and his " gallant inventions, 
were conformable to his own sensual life, and that 
he did not disdain to prostitute himself to the infa- 
mies of Aretino." 

His great architectural work in Mantua is the 
Palazzo del T, or Te, as it is now written. It was 
first called Palazzo del T, from the convergence 
of roads there in the form of that letter ; and the 
modern Mantuans call it Del Te, from the supersti- 
tion, transmitted to us by the custode of the Ducal 



348 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

Palace, that the Gonzagas merely used it on plea- 
sant afternoons to take tea in ! I say nothing to 
control the reader's choice between T and Te, and 
merely adhere to the elder style out of reverence 
for the past. It is certain that the air of the plain 
on which the palace stands is most unwholesome, 
and it may have been true that the dukes never 
passed the night there. Federico did not intend to 
build more than a lodge in this place ; but fasci- 
nated with the design offered him by Giulio, he 
caused the artist to go on, and contrive him a palace 
instead. It stands, as Vasari says, about a good 
bow-shot from one of the city's gates ; and going 
out to see the palace on our second day in Mantua, 
we crossed a drawbridge guarded by Austrian sol- 
diers. Below languished a bed of sullen ooze, 
tangled and thickly grown with long, villainous 
grasses, and sending up a damp and deathly stench, 
which made all the faces we saw look feverish and 
sallow. Already at that early season the air was 
foul and heavy, and the sun, faintly making himself 
seen through the dun sky of the dull spring day, 
seemed sick to look upon the place, where indeed 
the only happy and lively things were the clouds of 
gnats that danced before us, and welcomed us to 
the Palazzo del T. Damp ditches surround the 
palace, in which these gnats seemed to have pecul- 
iar pleasure ; and they took possession of the por- 
tico of the stately entrance of the edifice as we 
went in, and held it faithfully till we returned. 
In one of the first large rooms are the life-size 



DUCAL MANTUA 349 

portraits of the six finest horses of the Gonzaga 
stud, painted by the pupils of Giulio Romano, after 
the master's designs. The paintings attest the 
beauty of the Mantuan horses, and the pride and 
fondness of their ducal owners ; and trustworthy 
critics have praised their eminent truth. But we 
presently left them for the other chambers, in 
which the invention of Giulio had been used to 
please himself rather than his master. I scarcely 
mean to name the wonders of the palace, having, 
indeed, general associations with them, rather than 
particular recollections of them. 

One of the most famous rooms is the Chamber 
of Psyche (the apartments are not of great size), 
of which the ceiling is by Giulio and the walls are 
by his pupils. The whole illustrates, with every 
variety of fantastic invention, the story of Psyche, 
as told by Apuleius, and deserves to be curiously 
studied as a part of the fair outside of a superb and 
corrupt age, the inside of which was full of rotten- 
ness. The civilization of Italy, as a growth from 
the earliest Pagan times, and only modified by 
Christianity and the admixture of Northern blood 
and thought, is yet to be carefully analyzed ; and 
until this analysis is made, discussion of certain 
features must necessarily be incomplete and unsat- 
isfactory. No one, however, can stand in this 
Chamber of Psyche, and not feel how great reality 
the old mythology must still have had, not only 
for the artists who painted the room, but for the 
people who inhabited it and enjoyed it. I do not 



350 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

say that they believed it as they believed in the 
vital articles of Christian faith, but that they ac- 
cepted it with the same spirit as they accepted the 
martyrology of the Church ; and that to the fine 
gentlemen and ladies of the court, those jolly satyrs 
and careless nymphs, those Cupids and Psyches, 
and Dianas and Venuses, were of the same verity 
as the Fathers of the Desert, the Devil, and the 
great body of the saints. If they did not pray to 
them, they swore by them, and their names were 
much oftener on their lips ; and the art of the time 
was so thoroughly Pagan, that it forgot all Christian 
holiness, and clung only to heathen beauty. When 
it had not actually a mythologic subject to deal with, 
it paganized Christian themes. St. Sebastian was 
made to look like Apollo, and Mary Magdalene was 
merely a tearful, triste Venus. There is scarcely a 
ray of feeling in Italian art since Raphael's time 
which suggests Christianity in the artist, or teaches 
it to the beholder. In confessedly Pagan subjects 
it was happiest, as in the life of Psyche, in this 
room ; and here it inculcated a gay and spirited 
license, and an elegant absence of modesty. It 
would be instructive to know in what spirit the 
common Mantuans of his day looked upon the in- 
ventions of the painter, and how far the courtly 
circle which frequented this room went in discus- 
sion of the unspeakable indecency of some of the 
scenes. 1 

1 The ruin in the famous room frescoed with the Fall of the 
Giants commences on the very door-jambs, which are painted in 



DUCAL MANTUA 351 

Returning to the city, we visited the house of 
Giulio Romano, which stands in one of the fine, 
lonesome streets, and at the outside of which we 
looked. The artist designed it himself ; and it is 
very pretty, with delicacy of feeling in the fine stucco 
ornamentation, but is not otherwise interesting. 

We passed it, continuing our way toward the 
Arsenal, near which we had seen the women at 
work washing the linen coats of the garrison in the 
twilight of the evening before ; and we now saw 
them again from the bridge, on which we paused 
to look at a picturesque bit of modern life in Man- 
tua. They washed the linen in a clear, swift-run- 
ning stream, diverted from the dam of the Mincio 
to furnish mill-power within the city wall ; and we 
could look down the watercourse past old arcades 
of masonry half submerged in it, past pleasant 
angles of houses and a lazy mill-wheel turning 
slowly, slowly, till our view ended in the gallery of 
a time-worn palace, through the columns of which 
was seen the blue sky. Under the bridge the 
stream ran very strong and lucid, over long, green, 
undulating water-grasses, which it loved to dimple 
over and play with. On the right were the laun- 
dresses under the eaves of a wooden shed, each 
kneeling, as their custom is, in a three-sided box, 

broken and tumbling brick- work ; and throughout there is a pro- 
digiousness which does not surprise, and a bigness which does 
not impress. In Kugler's Hand-book of Italian Painting are two 
illustrations, representing parts of the fresco, which give a fair 
idea of the whole. 



352 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

and leaning forward over the washboard that sloped 
down into the water. As they washed they held 
the linen in one hand, and rubbed it with the other; 
then heaped it into a mass upon the board and beat 
it with great two-handed blows of a stick. They 
sang, meanwhile, one of those plaintive airs of which 
the Italian peasants are fond, and which rose in 
indescribable pathos, pulsing with their blows, and 
rhythmic with the graceful movement of their fig- 
ures. Many of the women were young, — though 
they were of all ages, — and the prettiest among 
them was third from where we stood upon the 
bridge. She caught sight of the sketch-book which 
one of the travelers carried, and pointed it out to 
the rest, who could hardly settle to their work to 
be sketched. Presently an idle baker, whose shop 
adjoined the bridge, came out and leaned upon the 
parapet, and bantered the girls. "They are draw- 
ing the prettiest," he said, at which they all bridled 
a little ; and she who knew herself to be prettiest 
hung her head and rubbed furiously at the linen. 
Long before the artist had finished the sketch, the 
lazy, good-humored crowd which the public prac- 
tice of the fine arts always attracts in Italy had sur- 
rounded the strangers, and were applauding, com- 
menting, comparing, and absorbing every stroke as 
it was made. When the book was closed and they 
walked away, a number of boys straggled after 
them some spaces, inspired by a curious longing and 
regret, like that which leads boys to the eager in- 
spection of fireworks when they have gone out. We 



DUCAL MANTUA 353 

lost them at the first turning of the street, whither 
the melancholy chorus of the women's song had also 
followed us, and where it died pathetically away. 

In the evening we walked to the Piazza Virgili- 
ana, the beautiful space laid out and planted with 
trees by the French, at the beginning of this cen- 
tury, in honor of the great Mantuan poet. One of 
its bounds is the shore of the lake which surrounds 
the city, and from which now rose ghostly vapors on 
the still twilight air. Down the slow, dull current 
moved one of the picturesque black boats of the Po; 
and beyond, the level landscape had a pleasant des- 
olation that recalled the scenery of the Middle Mis- 
sissippi. It might have been here in this very water 
that the first-born of our first Duke of Mantua fell 
from his boat while hunting water-fowl in 15 50, and 
took a fever of which he died only a short time after 
his accession to the sovereignty of the duchy. At 
any rate, the fact of the accident brings me back 
from lounging up and down Mantua to my duty of 
chronicler. Francesco's father had left him in 
childhood to the care of his uncle, the Cardinal 
Hercules, who ruled Mantua with a firm and able 
hand, increasing the income of the state, spending 
less upon the ducal stud, and cutting down the 
number of mouths at the ducal table from eight 
hundred to three hundred and fifty-one. His justice 
tended to severity rather than mercy ; but reformers 
of our own time will argue well of his heart, that he 
founded in that time a place of refuge and retire- 
ment for abandoned women. Good Catholics will 






354 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

also be pleased to know that he was very efficient 
in suppressing the black heresy of Calvin, which 
had crept into Mantua in his day, — probably from 
Ferrara, where the black heretic himself was then, 
or about then, in hiding under the protection of the 
ill-advised Marchioness Renee. The good cardinal 
received the Pope's applause for his energy in this 
matter, and no doubt his hand fell heavily on the 
Calvinists. Of the duke who died so young, the 
Venetian ambassador thought it worth while to 
write what I think it worth while to quote, as illus- 
trating the desire of the Senate to have careful 
knowledge of its neighbors : " He is a boy of melan- 
choly complexion. His eyes are full of spirit, but 
he does not delight in childish things, and seems 
secretly proud of being lord. He has an excellent 
memory, and shows much inclination for letters." 

His brother Guglielmo, who succeeded him in 
1550, seems to have had the same affection for 
learning ; but he was willful, harsh, and cruelly am- 
bitious, and cared, an old writer says, for nothing 
so much as perpetuating the race of the Gonzagas 
in Mantua. He was a hunchback, and some of his 
family (who could not have understood his charac- 
ter) tried to persuade him not to assume the ducal 
dignity ; but his haughty temper soon righted him 
in their esteem, and it is said that all the courtiers 
put on humps in honor of the duke. He was not a 
great warrior, and there are few picturesque inci- 
dents in his reign. Indeed, nearly the last of these 
in Mantuan history was the coronation at Mantua 



DUCAL MANTUA 355 

of the excellent poet Lodovico Ariosto, by Charles 
V., in 1532, Federico II. reigning. But the Man- 
tuans of Guglielmo's day were not without their 
sensations, for three Japanese ambassadors passed 
through their city on the way to Rome. They were 
also awakened to religious zeal by the reappearance 
of Protestantism among them. The heresy was 
happily suppressed by the Inquisition, acting under 
Pius V., though with small thanks to Duke Wil- 
liam, who seems to have taken no fervent part in 
the persecutions. The duke must have made haste 
after this to reconcile himself with the Church ; for 
we read that two years later he was permitted to 
take a particle of the blood of Christ from the 
church of St. Andrea to that of Sta. Barbara, where 
he deposited it in a box of crystal and gold, and 
caused his statue to be placed before the shrine in 
the act of adoring the relic. 

Duke William managed his finances so well as to 
leave his spendthrift son Vincenzo a large sum 
of money to make away with after his death. Part 
of this, indeed, he had earned by obedience to his 
father's wishes in the article of matrimony. The 
prince was in love with the niece of the Duke of 
Bavaria, very lovely and certainly high-born enough, 
but having unhappily only sixty thousand crowns to 
her portion. So she was not to be thought of, and 
Vincenzo married the sister of the Duke of Parma, 
of whom he grew so fond that, though two years of 
marriage brought them no children, he could scarce 
be persuaded to suffer her divorce on account of 



356 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

sterility. This happened, however, and the prince's 
affections were next engaged by the daughter of the 
Grand Duke of Tuscany. The lady had a portion 
of three hundred thousand crowns, which entirely 
charmed the frugal-minded Duke William, and 
Vincenzo married her, after certain diplomatic pre- 
liminaries demanded by the circumstances, which 
scarcely bear statement in English, and which the 
present history would blush to give even in Italian. 

Indeed, he was a great beast, this splendid Vin- 
cenzo, both by his own fault and that of others ; 
but it ought to be remembered of him, that at his 
solicitation the most clement lord of Ferrara lib- 
erated from durance in the hospital of St. Anna 
his poet Tasso, whom he had kept shut in that 
mad-house seven years. On his delivery, Tasso 
addressed his " Discorso " to Vincenzo's kinsman, 
the learned Cardinal Scipio Gonzaga ; and to this 
prelate he submitted for correction the "Gerusa- 
lemme," as did Guarini his " Pastor Fido." 

When Vincenzo came to power, he found a fat 
treasury, which he enjoyed after the fashion of the 
time, and which, having a princely passion for every 
costly pleasure, he soon emptied. He was crowned 
in 1587; and on his coronation day rode through 
the streets throwing gold to the people, after the 
manner of the Mantuan dukes. He kept up an 
army of six thousand men, among a population of 
eighty thousand all told ; and maintained as his 
guard " fifty archers on horseback, who also served 
with the arquebuse, and fifty light-horsemen for the 



DUCAL MANTUA 357 

guard of his own person, who were all excellently 
mounted, the duke possessing such a noble stud of 
horses that he always had five hundred at his ser- 
vice, and kept in stable one hundred and fifty of 
marvelous beauty.' ' He lent the Spanish king two 
hundred thousand pounds out of his fathers spar- 
ings ; and when the Archduchess of Austria, Mar- 
gherita, passed through Mantua on her way to wed 
Philip II. of Spain, he gave her a diamond ring 
worth twelve thousand crowns. Next after women, 
he was madly fond of the theatre, and spent im- 
mense sums for actors. He would not, indeed, cede 
in splendor to the greatest monarchs, and in his 
reign of fifteen years he squandered fifty million 
crowns ! No one will be surprised to learn from a 
contemporary writer in Mantua, that this excellent 
prince was adorned with all the Christian virtues ; 
nor to be told by a later historian, that in Vin- 
cenzo's time Mantua was the most corrupt city in 
Europe. A satire of the year 1601, which this 
writer (Maffei) reduces to prose, says of that pe- 
riod : " Everywhere in Mantua are seen feasts, 
jousts, masks, banquets, plays, music, balls, delights, 
dancing. To these the young girls/' an enormity 
in Italy, " as well as the matrons, go in magnificent 
dresses ; and even the churches are scenes of love- 
making. Good mothers, instead of teaching their 
daughters the use of the needle, teach them the arts 
of rouging, dressing, singing, and dancing. Naples 
and Milan scarcely produce silk enough, or India 
and Peru gold and gems enough, to deck out female 



358 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

impudence and pride. Courtiers and warriors per- 
fume themselves as delicately as ladies ; and even 
the food is scented, that the mouth may exhale fra- 
grance. The galleries and halls of the houses are 
painted full of the loves of Mars and Venus, Leda 
and the Swan, Jove and Danae, while the devout 
solace themselves with such sacred subjects as Su- 
sannah and the Elders. The flower of chastity 
seems withered in Mantua. No longer in Lydia 
nor in Cyprus, but in Mantua, is fixed the realm 
of pleasure." The Mantuans were a different peo- 
ple in the old republican times, when a fine was 
imposed for blasphemy, and the blasphemer put into 
a basket and drowned in the lake, if he did not pay 
within fifteen days ; which must have made pro- 
fanity a luxury even to the rich. But in that day 
a man had to pay twenty soldi (seventy-five cents) 
if he spoke to a woman in church ; and women 
were not allowed even the moderate diversion of 
going to funerals, and could not wear silk lace about 
the neck, nor have dresses that dragged more than 
a yard, nor crowns of pearls or gems, nor belts 
worth more than ten livres (twenty-five dollars), 
nor purses worth more than fifteen soldi (fifty 
cents). 

Possibly as an antidote for the corruption brought 
into the world with Vincenzo, there was another 
Gonzaga born about the same period, who became 
in due time Saint Louis Gonzaga, and remains to 
this day one of the most powerful friends of virtue 
to whom a good Catholic can pray. He is particu- 



DUCAL MANTUA 359 

larly recommended by his biographer, the Jesuit 
Father Cesari, in cases of carnal temptation, and im- 
proving stories are told Italian youth of the miracles 
he works under such circumstances. He vowed 
chastity for his own part at an age when most chil- 
dren do not know good from evil, and he carried the 
fulfillment of this vow to such extreme, that, being 
one day at play of forfeits with other boys and girls, 
and being required to kiss — not one of the little 
maidens — but her shadow on the wall, he would 
not, preferring to lose his pawn. 

San Luigi Gonzaga descended from that Ridolfo 
who put his wife to death, and his father was Mar- 
quis of Castiglione delle Stivere. He was born in 
1568, and, being the first son, was heir to the mar- 
quisate ; but from his earliest years he had a call to 
the Church. His family did everything possible to 
dissuade him — his father with harshness, and his 
uncle, Duke William of Mantua, with tenderness — 
from his vocation. The latter even sent a " bishop 
of rare eloquence " to labor with the boy at Casti- 
glione ; but everything was done in vain. In due 
time Luigi joined the Company of Jesus, renounced 
this world, and died at Rome in the odor of sanctity, 
after doing such good works as surprised every one. 
His brother Ridolfo succeeded to the marquisate, 
and fell into a quarrel with Duke William about 
lands, which dispute Luigi composed before his 
death. 

From the time of the first Vincenzo's death, there 
are only two tragic events which lift the character 



360 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

of Mantuan history above the quality of chronique 
scandaleuse, namely, the Duke Ferdinand's repudia- 
tion of Camilla Faa di Casale, and the sack of Man- 
tua in 1630. The first of these events followed 
close upon the demise of the splendid Vincenzo ; for 
his son Francesco reigned but a short time, and 
died, leaving a little daughter of three years to the 
guardianship of her uncle, the Cardinal Ferdinand. 
The law of the Mantuan succession excluded fe- 
males ; and Ferdinand, dispensed from his ecclesi- 
astical functions by the Pope, ascended the ducal 
throne. In 161 5, not long after his accession, as 
the chronicles relate, in passing through a chamber 
of the palace he saw a young girl playing upon a 
cithern, and being himself young, and of the ardent 
temper of the Gonzagas, he fell in love with the fair 
minstrel. She was the daughter of a noble servant 
of the duke, who bad once been his ambassador to 
the court of the Duke of Savoy, and was called 
Count Ardizzo Faa Monferrino di Casale. It seems 
that the poor girl loved her ducal wooer ; and be- 
sides the ducal crown was a glittering temptation, 
and she consented to a marriage which, for state 
and family reasons, was made secret. When the 
fact was bruited, it raised the wrath and ridicule of 
Ferdinand's family, and the duke's sister Margaret, 
Duchess of Ferrara, had so lofty a disdain of his 
mesalliance with an inferior, that she drove him to 
desperation with her sarcasms. About this time 
Camilla's father died, with strong evidences of poi- 
soning ; and the wife being left helpless and friend 



DUCAL MANTUA 361 

less, her noble husband resorted to the artifice of 
feigning that there had never been any marriage, 
and thus sought to appease his family. Unhappily, 
however, he had given her a certificate of matri- 
mony, which she refused to surrender when he put 
her away, so that the duke, desiring afterwards to 
espouse the daughter of the Grand Duke of Tus- 
cany, was obliged to present a counterfeit certificate 
to his bride, who believed it the real marriage con- 
tract, and destroyed it. When the duchess dis- 
covered the imposition, she would not rest till she 
had wrung the real document from Camilla, under 
the threat of putting her son to death. The miser- 
able mother then retired to a convent, and died of a 
broken heart, while Ferdinand bastardized his only 
legitimate son, a noble boy, whom his mother had 
called Jacinth. After this, a kind of retribution, 
amid all his political successes, seems to have pur- 
sued the guilty duke. His second wife was too fat 
to bear children, but not to bear malice ; and she 
never ceased to distrust and reproach the duke, 
whom she could not believe in anything since the 
affair of the counterfeit marriage contract. She 
was very religious, and embittered Ferdinand's days 
with continued sermons and reproofs, and made him 
order, in the merry Mantuan court, all the devotions 
commanded by her confessor. 

So Ferdinand died childless, and, it is said, in 
sore remorse, and was succeeded in 1626 by his 
brother Vincenzo, another hope of the faith and 
light of the Church. His brief reign lasted but one 



362 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

year, and was ignoble as it was brief, and fitly ended 
the direct line of the Gonzagas. Vincenzo, though 
an ecclesiastic, never studied anything, and was dis- 
gracefully ignorant. Lacking the hereditary love 
of letters, he had not the warlike boldness of his 
race ; and resembled his ancestors only in the love 
he bore to horses, hunting, and women. He was 
enamored of the widow of one of his. kinsmen, a 
woman no longer young, but of still agreeable per- 
son, strong will, and quick wit, and of a fascinating 
presence, which Vincenzo could not resist. He was 
wooing her, with a view to seduction, when he re- 
ceived the nomination of cardinal from Pope Paul V. 
He pressed his suit, but the lady would consent to 
nothing but marriage, and Vincenzo bundled up the 
cardinal's purple and sent it back, with a very care- 
less and ill-mannered letter, to the ireful Pope, who 
swore never to make another Gonzaga cardinal. He 
then married the widow, but soon wearied of her, 
and spent the rest of his days in vain attempts to 
secure a divorce, in order to be restored to his eccle- 
siastical benefices. And one Christmas morning he 
died childless ; and three years later the famous 
sack of Mantua took place. The events leading to 
this crime are part of one of the most complicated 
episodes of Italian history. 

Ferdinand, as guardian of his brother's daughter 
Maria, claimed the Duchy of Monferrato as part of 
his dominion ; but his claim was disputed by Maria's 
grandfather, the Duke of Savoy, who contended that 
it reverted to him, on the death of his daughter, as 



DUCAL MANTUA 363 

a fief which had been added to Mantua merely by 
the intermarriage of the Gonzagas with his family. 
He was supported in this claim by the Spaniards, 
then at Milan. The Venetians and the German 
Emperor supported Ferdinand, and the French ad- 
vanced the claim of a third, a descendant of Lodo- 
vico Gonzaga, who had left Mantua a century before, 
and entered upon the inheritance of the Duchy of 
Nevers-Rethel. The Duke of Savoy was one of the 
boldest of his warlike race ; and the Italians had 
great hopes of him as one great enough to drive 
the barbarians out of Italy. But nearly three cen- 
turies more were wanted to raise his family to the 
magnitude of a national purpose ; and Carlo Eman- 
uel spent his greatness in disputes with the petty 
princes about him. In this dispute for Monferrato 
he was worsted ; for at the treaty of Pavia, Mon- 
ferrato was assured to Duke Ferdinand of Mantua. 
Ferdinand afterwards died without issue, and 
Vincenzo likewise died childless ; and Charles Gon- 
zaga of Nevers-Rethel, who had married Maria, 
Ferdinand's ward, became heir to the Duchy of 
Mantua, but his right was disputed by Ferrante 
Gonzaga of Guastalla. Charles hurriedly and half 
secretly introduced himself into Mantua without 
consultation with Venetian, Spaniard, or German. 
While Duke Olivares of Spain was meditating his 
recognition, his officer at Milan tried to seize Man- 
tua and failed ; but the German Emperor had been 
even more deeply offended, and claimed the remis- 
sion of Charles's rights as a feudatory of the Roman 



364 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

Empire, until he should have regularly invested him 
Charles prepared for defense. Meanwhile Spain 
and Savoy seized Monferrato, but they were after- 
wards defeated by the French, and the Spanish 
Milanese was overrun by the Venetians and Man- 
tuans. The German Emperor then sent down his 
Landsknechts, and in 1630 besieged Mantua, while 
the French promised help and gave none, and the 
Pope exhorted Charles to submit. The Venetians, 
occupied with the Uskok pirates, could do little 
in his defense. To the horrors of this unequal 
and desperate war were added those of famine ; and 
the Jews, passing between the camp and the city, 
brought a pest from the army into Mantua, which 
raged with extraordinary violence among the hun- 
gry and miserable people. In vain they formed 
processions, and carried the blood of Christ about 
the city. So many died that there were not boats 
enough to bear them away to their sepulture in the 
lakes, and the bodies rotted in the streets. There 
was not wanting at this time the presence of a 
traitor in the devoted city, a lieutenant in the Swiss 
Guard of the duke ; and when he had led the Ger- 
mans into Mantua, and received the reward of his 
infamy, two German soldiers, placed over him for 
his protection, killed him and plundered him of his 
spoil. 

The sack now began, and lasted three days, with 
unspeakable horrors. The Germans (then the most 
slavish and merciless of soldiers) violated Mantuan 
women, and buried their victims alive. The har- 






DUCAL MANTUA 365 

lots of their camp cast off their rags, and robing 
themselves in the richest spoils they could find, 
rioted through the streets, and added the shame of 
drunken orgies to the dreadful scene of blood and 
tears. The Jews were driven forth almost naked 
from the Ghetto. The precious monuments of ages 
were destroyed ; or such as the fury of the soldiers 
spared, the avarice of their generals consumed ; and 
pictures, statues, and other works of art were stolen 
and carried away. The churches were plundered, 
the sacred houses of religion were sacked, and the 
nuns who did not meet a worse fate went begging 
through the streets. 

The imperial general, Aldringher, had, immedi- 
ately upon entering the city, appropriated the Ducal 
Palace to himself as his share of the booty. He 
placed a strong guard around it, and spoiled it at 
leisure and systematically, and gained fabulous sums 
from the robbery. After the sack was ended, he 
levied upon the population (from whom his soldiers 
had forced everything that terror and torture could 
wring from them) four contributions, amounting to 
a hundred thousand doubloons. This population 
had, during the siege and sack, been reduced from 
thirty to twelve thousand ; and Aldringher had so 
thoroughly accomplished his part of the spoliation, 
that the Duke Charles, returning after the with- 
drawal of the Germans, could not find in the Ducal 
Palace so much as a bench to sit upon. He and his 
family had fled half naked from their beds on the 
entry of the Germans, and, after a pause in the 



366 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

citadel, had withdrawn to Ariano, whence the duke 
sent ambassadors to Vienna to expose his miserable 
fate to the Emperor. The conduct of Aldringher 
was severely rebuked at the capital ; and the Em- 
press sent Carlo's wife ten thousand zecchini, with 
which they returned at length to Mantua. It is 
melancholy to read how his neighbors had to com- 
passionate his destitution ; how the Grand Duke of 
Tuscany sent him upholstery for two state chambers ; 
how the Duke of Parma supplied his table-service ; 
how Alfonso of Modena gave him a hundred pairs 
of oxen, and as many peasants to till his desolated 
lands. His people always looked upon him with evil 
eyes, as the cause of their woes ; and after a reign 
of ten years he died of a broken heart, or, as some 
thought, of poison. 

Carlo had appointed as his successor his nephew 
and namesake, who succeeded to the throne ten 
years after his uncle's death, the Princess Maria 
Gonzaga being regent during his minority. Carlo 
II. early manifested the amorous disposition of his 
blood, but his reign was not distinguished by re- 
markable events. He was of imperial politics dur- 
ing those interminable French-Austrian wars, and 
the French desolated his dominions more or less. 
In the time of this Carlo II., we read of the Jews 
being condemned to pay the wages of the duke's 
archers for the extremely improbable crime of kill- 
ing some Hebrews who had been converted ; and 
there is account of the duchess going on foot to the 
sanctuary of Our Lady of Grace, to render thanks 



DUCAL MANTUA 367 

for her son's recovery from a fever, and her daugh- 
ter's recovery from the bite of a monkey. Mantua 
must also have regained something of its former 
gayety ; for in 1652 the Austrian Archdukes and 
the Medici spent Carnival there. Carlo II. died, 
like his father, with suspicions of poisoning, and 
undoubted evidences of debauchery. He was a gen- 
erous and amiable prince ; and, though a shameless 
profligate, was beloved by his subjects, with whom, 
no doubt, his profligacy was not a reproach. 

Ferdinand Carlo, whose ignoble reign lasted from 
1665 to 1708, was the last and basest of his race. 
The histories of his country do not attribute a sin- 
gle virtue to this unhappy prince, who seems to 
have united in himself all the vices of all the Gon- 
zagas. He was licentious and depraved as the first 
Vincenzo, and he had not Vincenzo's courage ; he 
was luxurious as the second Francesco, but had 
none of his generosity ; he taxed his people heavily 
that he might meanly enjoy their substance without 
making them even the poor return of national glory ; 
he was grasping as Guglielmo, but saved nothing to 
the state ; he was as timid as the second Vincenzo, 
and yet made a feint of making war, and went to 
Hungary at one time to fight against the Turk. 
But he loved far better to go to Venice in his 
gilded barge, and to spend his Carnivals amid the 
variety of that city's dissoluteness. He was so igno- 
rant as scarcely to be able to write his name ; but 
he knew all vicious things from his cradle, as if, in- 
deed, he had been gifted to know them by instinct 



368 ITALIAN JOURNEYS 

through the profligacy of his parents. It is said 
that even the degraded Mantuans blushed to be 
ruled by so dull and ignorant a wretch ; but in 
his time, nevertheless, Mantua was all rejoicings, 
promenades, pleasure-voyages, and merry-makings. 
" The duke recruited women from every country 
to stock his palace," says an Italian author, " where 
they played, sang, and made merry at his will and 
theirs." " In Venice," says Volta, "he surren- 
dered himself to such diversions without shame, or 
stint of expense. He not only took part in all pub- 
lic entertainments and pleasures of that capital, but 
he held a most luxurious and gallant court of his 
own ; and all night long his palace was the scene of 
theatrical representations by dissolute women, with 
music and banqueting, so that he had a worse name 
than Sardanapalus of old." He sneaked away to 
these gross delights in 1700, while the Emperor was 
at war with the Spaniards, and left his duchess (a 
brave and noble woman, the daughter of Ferrante 
Gonzaga, Duke of Guastalla) to take care of the 
duchy, then in great part occupied by Spanish and 
French forces. This was the War of the Spanish 
Succession ; and it used up poor Ferdinand, who 
had not a shadow of interest in it. He had sold 
the fortress of Casale to the French in 168 1, feign- 
ing that they had taken it from him by fraud ; and 
now he declared that he was forced to admit eight 
thousand French and Spanish troops into Mantua. 
Perhaps indeed he was, but the Emperor never 
would believe it ; and he pronounced Ferdinand 



DUCAL MANTUA 369 

guilty of felony against the Empire, and deposed 
him from his duchy. The duke appealed against 
this sentence to the Diet of Ratisbon, and, pending 
the Diet's decision, made a journey of pleasure to 
France, where the Grand Monarch named him gen- 
eralissimo of the French forces in Italy, though he 
never commanded them. He came back to Mantua 
after a little, and built himself a splendid theatre, 

— the cheerful duke. 

But his end was near. The French and Aus- 
trians made peace in 1 707 ; and next year, Monf er- 
rato having fallen to Savoy, the Austrians entered 
Mantua, whence the duke promptly fled. The 
Austrians marched into Mantua on the 29th of Feb- 
ruary, that being leap year, and Ferdinand came 
back no more. Indeed, trusting in false hopes of 
restoration held out to him by Venice and France, 
he died on the 5th of the July following, at Padua, 

— it was said by poison. So ended Ducal Mantua. 
The Austrians held the city till 1797. The 

French Revolution took it and kept it till 1799, and 
then left it to the Austrians for two years. Then 
the Cisalpine Republic possessed it till 1802 ; and 
then it was made part of the Kingdom of Italy, and 
so continued twelve years ; after which it fell again 
to Austria. In 1848, there was a revolution, and 
the Austrian soldiers stole the precious silver case 
that held the phial of the true blood. Now at last 
it belongs to the Kingdom of Italy, with the other 
forts of the Quadrilateral, — thanks to the Prussian 
needle-gun. 



INDEX 



Abbondio, Don, 265. 

Abranelli, Isaaco degli, a Rabbin of 
Ferrara, 22. 

Alboin, conquers Vicenza, 275 ; re- 
sisted successfully by the Man- 
tuans, 312. 

Aldringher, the imperial general, 
sacks Mantua, 364, 365. 

Alexander VI., Pope, holds the 
Grand Turk's brother prisoner, 

343- 

Alfieri, Vittorio, his inscription on 
Ariosto's "Furioso," 24, 25; his 
verses in Petrarch's house, 208. 

Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara, his treat- 
ment of Tasso, 13; releases him, 

356. 

Ancangeli, 247. 

Annunziata, Chapel of the, 182. 

Antonino, boatman at Sorrento, 106 ; 
a plausible liar, 107 ; his subter- 
fuges, 122 ; his disappointed hopes 
of plunder, 123. 

Argo, House of, at Herculaneum, 
103. 

Ariosto, his tomb in the Library at 
Ferrara, 23 ; manuscript of his 
"Furioso," 24; house of, 25, 26 • 
birthplace of, 27 ; crowned by 
Charles V. at Mantua, 355. 

Armenian Archbishop, his courtesy 
on the day of the Immaculate 
Conception, 149-151. 

Arqua, contemplated trip to, 197, 
198 ; country near, 199, 200 ; ap- 
proach to, 201, 202 ; curiosity of 
the people, 203 ; Petrarch's house 
at, 205-210; his tomb at, 210; a 
priest of, 211; washerwomen at, 



212, 213; the Obizzi custode s 
opinion of, 213. 

Asiago, industries of, 227. 

Attila, his sack of Padua, 1 79 ; of 
Vicenza, 275 ; turned from Man- 
tua by Pope Leo I., 311. 

Aurora, Hall of, in the Castle of 
the Dukes of Ferrara, 29. 

Austria, first called into Italian con- 
troversies, 314. 

Avventi, Count, doubts the authen- 
ticity of Tasso's cell, 12. 

Baptistery, at Pisa, 240. 

Barbers' signs, become sanguinary 

in the south of Italy, 97. 
Bassano, sentiment of, 218 ; picture 

gallery of, 253 ; school in, 253, 

254 ; inn at, 258, 259. 
Bastianino, his Last Judgment, 20. 
Battaglia, village on the road to 

Arqua, 200. 
Beatrice, sister of Ecelino and wife 

of Sordello, 320. 
Blind man, at the Duomo in Genoa, 

5 2 - 

Blue Grotto, at Capri, entrance, 
117; its appearance, 120, 121. 

Boccaccio, decides for literature at 
Virgil's tomb, j^. 

Bologna, journey to, delayed, 38-40; 
gloominess of, 42. 

Bonacolsi, a ruling family of Man- 
tua, 322-325. 

Bonacolsi, Bordellone, 322. 

Bonacolsi, Francesco, offends the 
Gonzagas, 323 ; slain, 325. 

Bonacolsi, Guido Botticella, 332. 

Bonacolsi, Passerino, captain of 



372 



INDEX 



Mantua, made Vicar of Modena, 
323 ; overthrown and killed, 324, 

3 2 5- 

Bonacolsi, Pinamonte, seizes the 
government of Mantua, 322. 

Bonato, Count Giovanni, custodian 
of the cave at Oliero, 219 ; conver- 
sation and deportment, 230. 

Boniface, first lord of Mantua under 
the Emperor, 313 ; attacks Ve- 
rona, 314 ; finds the sacred relics, 

3I5- 

Bora, fierce wind at Trieste, 243. 

Borgia, Lucrezia, story of her ven- 
geance upon the Venetians, 15. 

Brenta River, 219, 255. 

Brick, alias Lazzaretti, a guide to 
Fozza, 222, 223. 

Byron, Lord, his conduct at Tasso's 
cell, 11 ; house at Genoa occu- 
pied by, 51. 

Cambray, League of, 342. 

Campagna, the, a stroll upon, 146- 
148. 

Campo Santo, at Pisa, 238, 239 ; 
chain returned by the Genoese in, 
239, 240 and note; at Vicenza, 279. 

Canova, edifice with which he hon- 
ored Possagno, 259, 260 ; his 
niece, 260 ; legends of his begin- 
nings, 261 ; house of, 262 ; his 
work in Parma, 298. 

Capo di Monte, palace of, 75. 

Capri, hiring of a boat to, 106 ; 
arrival at, 107 ; Hotel di Londra 
at, 108; accent of the Capriotes, 
no; ruins of Tiberius's palace, 
115 ; the Blue Grotto, 120, 121. 

Captain of the steamer to Naples, 
57 5 suggests a cause of the Civil 
War, 58. 

Capulets, house of the, 286. 

Caracci, praises Correggio's As- 
sumption, 295 ; work by him in 
Parma, 298. 

Carlo Emanuel, Duke of Savoy, 
claims Monferrato, 363. 



Carmagnola, a Venetian leader, 330. 

Casale, Bishop of, considers Ro- 
mano's style conformable to his 
life, 347. 

Castellamare, 105 ; cripple at, 123. 

Castello di Corte, at Mantua, built 
by Luigi Gonzaga, 328 ; hall de- 
corated by Mantegna in, superb 
Gothic front, 334. 

Castiglione, Count Baldassare, 
training and early career, 345 ; 
services to Mantua, 345, 346 ; 
dies in Spain, 346. 

Catacombs of St. Sebastian, 136. 

Cavallerizza, at Mantua, 337. 

Cecilia da Baone, trouble over her 
marriage, 256 ; divorces and re- 
marriages, 257. 

Cento, caffe at, 40 ; excellent pic- 
ture gallery at, 41. 

Cesari, Father, biographer of St. 
Louis Gonzaga, 359. 

Cesarotti, his verses in Petrarch's 
house and Alfieri's opinion of, 208. 

Cestius, Caius, pyramid of, 144. 

Charlemagne, divides Mantuan lands 
among his soldiers, 312, 313. 

Charles V., Emperor, makes Fede- 
rico II. Duke of Mantua, 344 ; 
crowns the poet Ariosto, 355. 

Charles VIII. of France, defeated at 
Taro, 341. 

Cimbri, descendants of Rome's foes 
still in Northern Italy, 217; their 
former customs, 226 ; language 
and occupations, 227 ; their cus- 
toms and origin according to 
Rose, 227, 228 ?tote. 

Circeo, Mont, 64. 

Clock Tower of Vicenza, 274. 

Colico, hot and unhealthy, 267, 268. 

Coliseum, unsatisfactory, 128, 129, 
139; compared to the arena at 
Verona, 282. 

Columbus, ugly statue of, in Genoa, 
44. 

Como, approach to, 265 ; town of, 
266 ; departure from, 266, 267. 



INDEX 



373 



Como, Lake, row upon, 266 ; the 
sail up, 266 ; stop at Colico, 267- 
269 ; return to Como, 269, 270. 

Conservatorio delle Mendicanti at 
Rome, 129; a visit to, 130-133; 
life at, 132, 134. 

Consuls, difficulty of finding Amer- 
ican, in foreign cities, 45, 46. 

Corke, Lord, his account of the 
sights of Parma, 294. 

Correggio, his Assumption at 
Parma, 294, 295 ; his fresco in 
the Monastero di San Paolo, 296 ; 
other work of his, 298 ; influence 
on painting in Parma, 347. 

Corso, the, at Rome, 139. 

Cosmo II. de' Medici, Farnese The- 
atre built for, 299. 

Costanza, treaty of, 318. 

" Courtier, The," written by Casti- 
glione, 345. 

Cunizza, entitled to Paradise, 320 ; 
her amour with Sordello, 320. 

Dall' Ongaro, his remark on the 

Bora, 243. 
Dante, his account of the founding 

of Mantua, 303. 
Dickens, Charles, place where he 

lived in Genoa, 51. 
Diligence, chosen as a means of 

transport from Rome, 159-161 ; 

disadvantages of, 162-166 ; tips 

over, 167-170; more satisfactory 

than the steamer, 172. 
Diomed, Hotel, at Pompeii, 79, 93. 
Donatello, his marble Trojan horse, 

179. 

Dossi, Dosso, frescoes of, 31. 

Ducal Palace at Mantua, begun by 
Gianfrancesco Gonzaga, 331 ; Giu- 
lio Romano's work in, 335 ; hang- 
ing gardens in, 336 ; Hall of the 
Rivers, 336. 

Ecelino Balbo, procures Cecilia da 

Baone for his son, 256. 
Ecelino da Romano, his career and 



death, 185, 186; prisons of, 187; 
realistic representations of his 
tortures, 188-190; the prisons an 
imposture, 192 ; rules Vicenza, 
275 ; besieges Mantua, 319. 

Ecelino il Monaco, his injustice to 
his wife Cecilia, 257. 

Este, Niccolo d', began the castle of 
Ferrara, 28 note. 

Europe, is material, 6. 

Faa di Casale, Camilla, marries the 
Duke of Mantua and is repudi- 
ated, 360, 361. 

Facchini in Italy, rapacious but in- 
teresting, 235, 236. 

Famine, Tower of, 237. 

Farnese Theatre, in Parma, 299, 
300. 

Fedeli, of Mantua, 340. 

Feelmore, Moshu (Fillmore), presi- 
dent of the United States, anec- 
dote of, at the Baptistery in Pisa, 
241. 

Ferrara, sights in, connected with 
Tasso, 9-14 ; palace of Lucrezia 
Borgia in, 15; sketch of her his- 
tory, 17 ; lack of activity in, 19 ; 
cathedral at, 20 ; the Ghetto in, 
22 ; relics of Ariosto, 23-27 ; cas- 
tle of the Dukes of, 27-32 ; devo- 
tion and society in, 32 ; depar- 
ture from, 38-40. 

Follonica, incidents of the journey 
to, 159-172. 

Forum, the Roman, ruins of, dis- 
appointing, 128. 

Fozza, village of, 224 ; Capo-gente 
of, 225 ; the people of, described, 
226 ; the hermit of, 228, 229 ; the 
descent from, 229. 

Frederick Barbarossa, ruins in the 
Blue Grotto at Capri attributed 
to, 121 ; burns Vicenza, 275 ; plans 
the enslavement of Italy at Ron- 
caglia, 318. 

Frederick IL, invades Lombardy, 



374 



INDEX 



Garibaldi, loved by all Italians, 58 ; 
statuette of, in Naples, 75 ; his 
longing for Venice, 265. 

Gauls, drive the Etruscans from 
Mantua, 310. 

Geese, the honest man's recipe for 
making soup from, 8. 

Genoa, incidents of the journey- 
thence, 42, 43; statue of Colum- 
bus at, 44 ; search for the consul 
at, 47 ; streets in, 48 ; fashions 
and dress, 49, 50 ; its magnifi- 
cence, 51; the Duomo at, 52; 
palace of the Doges, 53 ; sea voy- 
age from, to Naples, 5 7-64. 

Germans, invade Lombardy under 
Frederick II., 318. 

Giotto, pictures at St. Anthony's, 
Padua, attributed to, 181. 

Giovanni da Verona, intagli by, in 
Verona, 292. 

Gonzagas, splendor of Mantua be- 
gins with their accession, 327 ; 
the succession . of, 328 ; their 
reigns, 328-334, 338-344, 353- 

3 6 9- 

Gonzaga, Barbara, wife of Ludovico, 
protects her son from his father, 
338-340. 

Gonzaga, Carlo, ransomed by his 
brother, 338. 

Gonzaga, Charles, of Nevers-Rethel, 
Duke of Mantua, marries Maria 
Gonzaga and succeeds to Man- 
tua, 363 ; driven out at the sack 
of the city, 365, 366 ; returns, 366. 

Gonzaga, Charles (Carlo) II., Duke 
of Mantua, his reign, 366, 367. 

Gonzaga, Federico, banished by his 
father, 338 ; cared for in Naples, 

339 ; marries as his father wishes, 

340 ; his short reign, 341. 
Gonzaga, Federico II., extends the 

Mantuan dominions and made 
Duke by Charles V., 344 ; sends 
Castiglione ambassador to Rome, 
345 ; welcomes Giulio Romano to 
Mantua, 346. 



Gonzaga, Ferdinand, Cardinal then 

Duke of Mantua, his treatment of 

his wife, 360, 361. 
Gonzaga, Ferdinand Carlo, Duke 

of Mantua, last and basest of the 

Gonzagas, 367-369. 
Gonzaga, Ferrante, of Guastalla, 

claims Mantua, 363 ; his daughter 

the wife of Ferdinand Carlo, 368. 
Gonzaga, Filippino, trouble with 

Passerino's son over his wife, 323, 

3 2 4- 

Gonzaga, Francesco, Captain of 
Mantua, his continual wars with 
the Visconti of Milan, 329, 330. 

Gonzaga, Francesco, Marquis of 
Mantua, hunter and soldier, leads 
the Venetian armies, 341 ; and 
those of the League of Cambray, 
342 ; does the Grand Turk a kind- 
ness, 342, 343 ; dies, 344 ; brings 
Castiglione back to Mantua, 345. 

Gonzaga, Francesco, second Duke 
of Mantua, described, 354. 

Gonzaga, Francesco, fifth Duke of 
Mantua, 360. 

Gonzaga, Gianfrancesco, first Mar- 
quis of Mantua, leads Venetian 
armies, 330 ; at the tournament 
in San Marco, 331 ; poisoned, 

Gonzaga, Guglielmo, Duke of Man- 
tua, his character, 354 ; religion 
and ability, 355. 

Gonzaga, Guido, shares his domain 
with his son, 328. 

Gonzaga, Ludovico, a peaceful ruler, 
328. 

Gonzaga, Ludovico, "il Turco,' 1 
his training, 332 ; encourages the 
arts at Mantua, 333 ; picks out a 
wife for his son, ^ '■> displeasure 
at his refusal, 339 ; the matter 
settled, 340. 

Gonzaga, Luigi, overthrows Pas- 
serino, 324, 325 ; made lord of 
Mantua, 325 ; his castle, 326 ; his 
reign, 328. 



INDEX 



375 



Gonzaga, San Luigi, his virtues and 
ancestry, 358, 359. 

Gonzaga, Maria, left to the care of 
her uncle, Cardinal Ferdinand, 
360; claim to Monferrato through, 
362, 363 ; marries Charles Gon- 
zaga of Nevers-Rethel, 363 ; re- 
turns to Mantua after the sack of 
1630, 366. 

Gonzaga, Scipio, Cardinal, 356. 

Gonzaga, Vincenzo, fourth Duke of 
Mantua, his marriages, 355, 356; 
squanders his fortune, 356, 3^7. 

Gonzaga, Vincenzo, seventh Duke of 
Mantua, ignoble and ignorant, 362. 

Goths, take Mantua, 311. 

Governo, place where Leo I. turned 
Attila back, 311. 

Grand Turk, anecdote of the rela- 
tions of Francesco Gonzaga to, 
342, 343- 

Greeks, hold Mantua for a while, 
312. 

Grossetto, small town on the road 
to Leghorn, 155-158; cause of 
the stop there, 170. 

Guercino, 41. 

Guglielmo da Castelbarco, 289. 

Guide-book, an animated, in the 
cabin of the Naples steamer, 60. 

Henry I., makes Vicenza an im- 
perial city, 275. 

Henry IV., the Emperor, displaces 
Matilda of Mantua, 315, 316. 

Herculaneum, road to, 95 ; the thea- 
tre and the beautiful works of art 
found there, 99 ; exhumed portion 
of, 100; its mournful aspect, 102; 
houses of Argo and Perseus, 103, 
104. 

Hercules, Cardinal, his able govern- 
ment, 353. 

Hugo and Parisina, their prisons, 
29. 

Isoletta, beggar boy of, 127. 
Italians, the only honest specimen, 



6; their love of Garibaldi, 58; 
converse on the subject of sea- 
sickness, 63 ; dress beyond their 
means, 71 ; simple, natural folks, 
76, 77- 
Italy, strong municipal spirit in, 7 ; 
authenticity of sights in, ques- 
tioned, 13 ; present literary work 
in, unsatisfactory, ^3 ; courtesy of 
the army officers, 34-37 ; robbed 
of its romance by travellers, 134. 

Jesuits, accused of causing the 
American Civil War, 58, 59. 

" Judgment of Paris," a fresco at 
Pompeii, 89-91. 

Juliet's Tomb, in Verona, 287. 

Julius II., Pope, makes Gonzaga 
leader of the Papal armies, 342. 

Keats, John, his grave in Rome, 
143-145- 

Lamartine, his name in Tasso's cell, 

IT. 

Laschi monument, 279. 

Lasells, Richard, Gent., his account 
of the sights of Parma, 294. 

Lazzaretti, alias Briick, a guide to 
Fozza, 222, 223. 

Leaning Tower of Pisa, 237. 

Legnano, battle of, 318. 

Leo I., turns back Attila, 311. 

Leoni, F., his " Life of Petrarch," 
with its account of the attempt to 
steal the poet's body, 210, 211. 

Lombards, their control of Mantua, 
312. 

Lombard League, beats the Em- 
peror at Legnano, 318. 

Longinus, story of, 310, 311. 

Maccaroni, making of, 96, 97. 
Malatesta, in a fit of anger, orders 

the destruction of Virgil's statue 

at Mantua, 332. 
Malatesta, Margherita, wife of Fran* 

cesco Gonzaga, 330. 



376 



INDEX 



Manfredo, Count of Baone and 
Abano, 256. 

Mantegna, work of, at Verona, 292 ; 
life and work at Mantua, 334. 

Manto, a Theban sorceress, the le- 
gendary founder of Mantua, 303, 

3°4- 
Mantua, stories of the founding of, 
3°3, 3°4 5 journey to, 305, 306 ; 
fortifications of, 307 ; general at- 
mosphere of, 308 ; history during 
the Roman period, 310-312; un- 
der the Lombards, 312 ; under 
Charlemagne, 312, 313 ; under the 
German Emperors, 313-316 ; un- 
der republican governments, 316- 
322 ; ruled by the Bonacolsi fam- 
ily, 322-325 ; the Gonzagas seize 
control, 325 ; state of the city at 
that time, 326, 327 ; under the 
Gonzaga captains, 328-330; be- 
comes subject to the Roman Em- 
perors when Gianfrancesco Gon- 
zaga became a marquis, 2,33 I pros- 
perity of, under 11 Turco, 233 5 
Castello di Corte at, 334 ; the 
Ducal Palace, 335 ; breed of Man- 
tuan horses begun, 341 ; church of 
Our Lady of Victory built, 343 ; 
reaches its largest area under the 
first Duke, 344 ; work of Giulio 
Romano in, 346-350 ; the Palazzo 
del T, 347-350 ; the washerwomen 
of, 351, 352 ; corruption in, under 
Vincenzo, 357, 358 ; sacked by 
the Germans in 1630, 364, 365 ; 
the Austrians take possession, 

3 6 9. 
Maremma, group representing the, 

157. 

Margherita, Archduchess of Austria, 

357- 
Margherita, of Bavaria, wife of 

Federico Gonzaga, 338, 340. 
Maria Louisa, Napoleon's wife, her 

charitable and artistic work for 

Parma, 298. 
Martin I., tomb of, 290. 



Martinelli, Tommaso, attempts to 

steal Petrarch's bones, 211. 
Matilda, Countess of Mantua, her 

career, 315, 316. 
Maximilian, Archduke, 247. 
Milan, hot and bustling, 264 ; Cas- 

tiglione trained at, 346. 
Miramare, Castle of, 247. 
Modena, cruelty of the vicar Pas- 

serino in, 323. 
Mondo, II, the good inn at Bassano, 

258. 
Monferrato, Duchy of, added to 

Mantua, 344 ; quarrel over, 362, 

3(>3- 
Monga, the Italian gentleman who 

excavated the Roman theatre at 

Verona, 284. 
Monte-Cassino, Benedictine convent 

of, 125, 126. 
Monte Rosa, 265. 
Monteroglio, battle near, 323. 
Morgan, Lady, her emotions on visit- 
ing Tasso's cell, 12. 
Muletresses, in Capri, 109. 
Muratori, characterizes the Petrarch 

relics as " superstitions," 209. 
Museo Civico, at Vicenza, 279. 
Mutinelli, quoted, 331. 
Mythology, its effect on Christian 

art, 349, 35°- 

Names, writing of, in public places, 
206. 

Naples, arrival in, 64; boat and 
other charges, 65, 66 ; the Toledo, 
67; peasant costumes and man- 
ners, 68, 69 ; display upon the 
Toledo, 70 ; Virgil's tomb, 72, J2 I 
churches of, uninteresting, 74 ; 
Spanish tyranny in, 75 ; bay of, 
78 ; shipping district of, 95, 96 ; 
English names in, 97 ; final depar- 
ture from, 124. 

Norton, Mr., his account of the 
chain at Pisa, 240 note. 

Obizzi, Castle of, 213. 



INDEX 



377 



Ocno, King, an Etruscan, reputed 
to be the founder of Mantua, 

3°4- 
Officers, of the Italian army, their 
kindness, 34; anecdotes of, 34- 

37- 

Old gentleman, who supped on sar- 
dines and pie, 55 ; a little sea- 
sick, 56. 

Oliero, cave at, 219, 255. 

Our Lady of Victory, Church of, at 
Mantua, 343. 

Overbeck, pleasure of looking at his 
paintings, 146. 

P , Signor, remarkable curiosi- 
ties in his house at Padua, 186, 
187 ; his realistic restoration of 
Ecelino's prison, 188-190. 

Padrocchi's, the great caffe of 
Padua, 191. 

Padua, sights of, 175 ; a walk on the 
wall, 176; historic attacks on, 
177, 179; old fruit venders, 178; 
university of, 180 ; architecture of, 
181; carriage drives in, 182, 183. 

Palazzo del T, suggested, 346 ; is 
Romano's great architectural 
work, 347 ; location bad, 348 ; 
paintings there, 349. 

Palladio, born in Vicenza, 273; 
theatre built by, 280, 281 ; his in- 
fluence on art in Vicenza, 347. 

Pantheon, fails to impress one, 129; 
tribulation of its sacristan, 148, 
149. 

Parisina and Hugo, their prisons, 
29. 

Parma, its regularity characteristic 
of the ducal cities, 293 ; work of 
Correggio in, 294-296 ; people of, 
297 ; sundry works of art at, 298 ; 
the Farnese Theatre, 299; in- 
fluence of Correggio on painting 
there, 347. 

Parmigianino, his " Moses breaking 
the Tables " and other work in 
Parma, 298, 299. 



Pasquino, 148. 

Petrarch, approach to his house at 
Arqua, 202 ; tablet to, 203 ; his 
house, 205-208 ; words at the 
close of his autobiography, 209, 
210; his tomb, 210; Florentine 
attempt to steal his bones, 210, 
211 ; received with high honor by 
Luigi Gonzaga, Captain of Man- 
tua, 328. 

Piazza Bra, 283. 

Piazza San Marco, tournament in, 

33*- 

Piazza Virgiliana, 353. 

Pico, Francesco, starved in a tower 
by Passerino, 323. 

Pilate, stairs from his house, 138. 

Pisa, a beautiful old town, 236 ; the 
Duomo, 237 ; the Leaning Tower, 
238; the Campo Santo, 238, 239; 
the Baptistery, 240; the howling 
ciceroni of, 241. 

Pisano, Nicolb, sculptures of, 240. 

Politian, composed "Orfeo" at 
Mantua, t>33- 

Pompeii, guides in, 79 ; slow pro- 
gress of excavation, 80 ; disap- 
pointment at its ruined cordition, 
81 ; fields above the still buried 
part, 84, 85 ; the amphitheatre, 
86; plans of the houses, S7; mo- 
saics and frescoes at, 88-92 ; 
moulds of the human bodies in, 
92. 

Pompey, Theatre of, 139. 

Ponte, Jacopo da, 252. 

Pope, conducts services at the Sis- 
tine Chapel, 151. 

Portici, vileness of the road to, 98 ; 
the town itself, 98. 

Porto Longone, 61, 62. 

Posilippo, Grot of, 71, 72. 

Possagno, the village, 259 ; memorial 
edifice erected by Canova, 260 ; 
gallery at, 261. 

Prato della Valle, at Padua, 180. 

Printing office, first one established 
at Mantua, ^33- 



378 



INDEX 



Psyche, chamber of, at the Palazzo 
del T, 349. 

Ranuzio I., builds the Farnese 

Theatre in Parma, 299. 
Rappaccini, Doctor, his garden, 175, 

176. 
Reggio, courtesy of Italian officers 

at, 34. 

Renee, Marchioness, of Ferrara, 
converted by Calvin, 30, 31. 

Rienzi, house of, 139. 

Romanino, picture at Santa Gius- 
tina by, 183 ; four horrible pic- 
tures by, in Verona, 292. 

Romano, Giulio, his work at Man- 
tua, 335 ; plans the Cavallerizza, 
337; comes to Mantua, 346; his 
influence on the art there, 346, 
347 ; generally useful, 347 ; his 
great architectural work, 347, 348 ; 
paintings there, 349 ; his house, 

35 1 - 

Romans, their government of Man- 
tua, 310, 311. 

Rome, the shortest road to, 3 ; jour- 
ney to, from Naples, 125-127; 
the modern city hideous, 129; 
changes in to catch American 
travellers, 135 ; malaria in, 138 ; 
dirty street in, 139; as viewed 
from the dome of St. Peter's, 141 ,* 
tourists in, 142. 

Roncaglia, Diet at, 317, 318. 

Rose, an English traveller, describes 
the customs and origin of the 
Cimbri, 227, 228 note. 

Rovere, Gian Delia, robs the Turk- 
ish Ambassador, 342, 343. 

Rovigo, the home of the only honest 
man in Italy, 7 ; swindled at the 
Iron Crown in, 8. 

Rudolph, Emperor, pillages Man- 
tua, 313. 

St. Anna, hospital of, where Tasso 

was confined, 9. 
St. Anthony's, at Padua, 181. 



St. John Lateran, relics in the 

church of, 138. 
St. Peter's, church of, not necessary 

to go to the top, 140 ; its vast- 

ness, 141. 
St. Sebastian, Catacombs of, 136; 

relics in the church of, 137. 
San Germano, Benedictine convent 

at, 125. 
San Giorgio Maggiore, at Verona, 

292. 
San Paolo, Monastero di, 296. 
San Paolo fuori le Mura, its splen- 
dor, 143. 
San Sebastian, palace of, at Mantua> 

334- 

San Zenone, in Verona, 289 ; sacris- 
tan at, 292. 

Sanbonifazio, Count, Cunizza's hus- 
band, 320. 

Santa Giustina, church and prison 
of, 183 ; relics of, 184. 

Santa Maria, in Organo, 292. 

Sanvitali, Countess, lives in Parma, 
298. 

Scala, Can Grande della, helps over- 
throw Passerino at Mantua, 324 ; 
his reward, 325 ; wants more, 
328. 

Scaliger, John, 290. 

Scaligeri, tombs of, at Verona, 290, 
291. 

Scaramello, murderer of Martin I.. 
290. 

Seafarers, curious people, 48 ; treat- 
ment of, in Naples, 95, 96. 

Sette Communi, 217; adventurous 
road to, 221, 222 ; the village of 
Fozza, 224 ; language and cus- 
toms, 226, 227 ; return from, 229, 
230. 

Shelley, Percy Bysshe, his grave 
near Rome, 144. 

Sigismund, Emperor, makes Fran- 
cesco Gonzaga a marquis, 330. 

Sistine Chapel, services in, 150. 

Smoking, by Italian women, 27* 

Somersault girl in Genoa, 53. 



INDEX 



379 



Sordello, poet and knight of Mantua, 
319, 320 ; his amour with Cu- 
nizza, 320, 321 ; his military abil- 
ity, 321. 

Sorrento, trip to, 105 ; return to, 
from Capri, 122. 

Spain, her tyranny in Naples, 75. 

Spalato, glories of, rehearsed by two 
priests, 126. 

Spinabello da Xendrico, guardian 
of Cecilia da Baone, 256, 257. 

Spliigen Pass, 269. 

Stella d' Oro, hotel in Ferrara, 9, 34. 

Swiss family returning from Russia, 

5- 
Swiss Guards of the Pope, 151. 

Tarantella, danced near Capri, 112. 

Tarpeian Rocks, two of them, 140. 

Tasso, hospital of St. Anna where 
he was confined, 9 ; his cell, 10 ; 
doubts of its authenticity, 12, 13 ; 
manuscripts of, 24 ; house of, in 
Sorrento, 122 ; released by inter- 
cession of the Duke of Mantua, 

356. 

Teatro Sociale, at Padua, 193. 

Theodoric, founds the Basilica of 
Vicenza, 274. 

Tiberius, ascent to palaces of, in 
Capri, 109 ; inn near the ruins, 
112; anecdotes of, 113, 114; con- 
dition of the ruins, 115 ; possible 
baths of, T2o ; possible ruins of his 
works in the Blue Grotto, 121. 

Tintoretto, work by, in Verona, 
292 ; his influence in Venice, 346. 

Tiso da Camposampiero, rejected 
suitor of Cecilia da Baone, 256 ; 
his revenge on her, 257. 

Titian, his influence in Venice, 346. 

Toledo, the main street of Naples, 
67, 70. 

Tortona, Tommaso da, his fate, 28 
note. 

Treviso, town and duomo, 262, 263. 

Trieste, arrival at, 242 ; clean and 
full of life, 243 ; the peasant girls | 



of, 244; confusion of races and 
tongues, 245 ; history, 246 ; ob- 
jects of interest, 247 ; finding the 
steamer to Venice, 248, 249. 

Urbino, Dukes of, Castiglione em- 
ployed by, 345. 

Valery, his account of Byron's visit 
to Tasso's cell, 1 1 ; of the Ariosto 
MS., 24; mentions the society of 
Ferrara, 32 ; mentions Boccaccio's 
decision at Virgil's tomb, y^] 
statements about the baths and 
ruins at the Blue Grotto, 120, 121. 

Valstagna, beginning of the mule 
ride to the Sette Communi, 220. 

Vandals, sack Mantua, 311. 

Vela, Laschi monument by, 279. 

Venice, departure from, 3 ; Lucrezia 
Borgia's vengeance for an insult 
in, 15 ; compared to Genoa, 51; 
approach to from Trieste, 251 ; 
compared to Milan, 264, 265 ; her 
armies led by Gonzaga, Marquis 
of Mantua, 330 ; tournament at, 
in 14 14, 33 t ; influence of Titian 
and Tintoretto in, 346. 

Ventisei, a guide at Pompeii, 79, 

93-. 
Verci, his opinion of Sordello, 321. 

Vergognosa, 238. 

Verona, arena in, compared to the 
Coliseum, 282 ; its perfect preser- 
vation, 282, 283 ; Roman theatres 
at, 284, 285 ; house of the Capu- 
lets, 286 ; picturesque features, 
288 ; Gothic spirit in the archi- 
tecture of, 289 ; tombs of the 
Scaligeri, 290, 291 ; churches of, 
292 ; is sacked by the Mantuans, 

3H- 
Veronese, work by, at San Giorgio 

Maggiore, Verona, 292. 
Vesuvius, 64, yS. 
Vetturini, in Italy, rapacious but 

interesting, 235, 236. 
Vicenza, objects of interest, 274 ; his- 



38o 



INDEX 



tory, 275 ; demonstration against 
Austria in the opera house, 276- 
278 ; excellent Hotel de la Ville 
at, 278 ; Museo Civico and the 
Campo Santo, 279 ; theatre at, 
built for Greek tragedy, 280, 281 ; 
influence of Palladio in, 347. 

Victor Emanuel, and the howling 
ciceroni of Pisa, 241. 

Villa Reale, in Naples, 71, 76. 

Villafranca, 306. 

Virgil, tomb of, J2 t ?$) lives at 



Mantua, 310; his statue at Man- 
tua destroyed, 331, 332. 

Virginia, little girl at the Roman 
Conservatorio, 130, 131 ; photo- 
graphed, 133. 

Visconti, Barnabo, 330. 

Volta, a Mantuan historian, his 
opinion of Sordello, 321. 



Washington, George, 

named, 261. 
Winkelmann, 247. 



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